2.  Precarii or boon days:  that is, work generally during harvest, at the lord’s request, sometimes instead of week work, sometimes in addition.

3.  Gafol or tribute:  fixed payments in money or kind, and such services as ‘fold soke’, which forced the tenants’ sheep to lie on the lord’s land for the sake of the manure; and suit of mill, by which the tenant was bound to grind his corn in the lord’s mill.

With regard to the ‘boon days’ in harvest, it should be remembered that harvest time in the Middle Ages was a most important event.  Agriculture was the great industry, and when the corn was ripe the whole village turned out to gather it, the only exceptions being the housewives and sometimes the marriageable daughters.  Even the larger towns suspended work that the townsmen might assist in the harvest, and our long vacation was probably intended originally to cover the whole work of gathering in the corn and hay.  On the occasion of the ‘boon-day’ work, the lord usually found food for the labourers which, the Inquisition of Ardley[26] tells us, might be of the following description:  for two men, porridge of beans and peas and two loaves, one white, the other of ‘mixtil’ bread; that is, wheat, barley, and rye mixed together, with a piece of meat, and beer for their first meal.  Then in the evening they had a small loaf of mixtil bread and two ‘lescas’ of cheese.  While harvest work was going on the better-off tenants, usually the free ones, were sometimes employed to ride about, rod in hand, superintending the others.

The services of the villeins were often very comprehensive, and even included such tasks as preparing the lord’s bath; but on some manors their services were very light.[27] When the third of the above obligations, the gafol or tribute, was paid in kind it was most commonly made in corn; and next came honey, one of the most important articles of the Middle Ages, as it was used for both lighting and sweetening purposes.  Ale was also common, and poultry and eggs, and sometimes the material for implements.

These obligations were imposed for the most part on free and unfree tenants alike, though those of the free were much lighter than those of the unfree; the chief difference between the two, as far as tenure of the land went, lay in the fact that the former could exercise proprietary rights over his holding more or less freely, the latter had none.[28] It seems very curious to the modern mind that the villein, a man who farmed about 100 acres of land, should have been in such a servile condition.

The amount of work due from each villein came to be fixed by the extent or survey of the manor, but the quality of it was not[29]; that is, each one knew how many days he had to work, but not whether he was to plough, sow, or harrow, &c.  It is surprising to find, that on the festival days of the Church, which were very numerous and observed as holy days, the lord lost by no work being done, and the same was the case in wet weather.