One of the most important duties of the tenant was the ‘averagium’, or duty of carrying for the lord, especially necessary when his manors were often a long way apart.  He would often have to carry corn to the nearest town for sale, the products of one manor to another, also to haul manure on to the demesne.  If he owned neither horse nor ox, he would sometimes have to use his own back.[30]

The holding of the villein did not admit of partition by sale or descent, it remained undivided and entire.  When the holder died all the land went to one of the sons if there were several, often to the youngest.  The others sought work on the manor as craftsmen or labourers, or remained on the family plot.  The holding therefore might contain more than one family, but to the lord remained one and undivided.[31]

In the fourth class came the bordarii, the cotarii, and the coliberti or buri; or, as we should say, the crofters, the cottagers, and the boors.

The bordarii numbered 82,600 in Domesday, and were subject to the same kind of services as the villeins, but the amount of the service was considerably less.[32] Their usual holding was 5 acres, and they are very often found on the demesne of the manor, evidently in this case labourers on the demesne, settled in cottages and provided with a bit of land of their own.  The name failed to take root in this country, and the bordarii seem to become villeins or cottiers.[33]

The cotarii, cottiers or cottagers, were 6,800 in number, with small pieces of land sometimes reaching 5 acres.[34] Distinctly inferior to the villeins, bordarii, and cottars, but distinctly superior to the slaves, were the buri or coliberti who, with the bordars and cottars, would form a reserve of labour to supplement the ordinary working days at times when work was pressing, as in hay time and harvest.  At the bottom of the social ladder in Domesday came the slaves, some 25,000 in number, who in the main had no legal rights, a class which had apparently already diminished and was diminishing in numbers, so that for the cultivation of the demesne the lord was coming to rely more on the labour of his tenants, and consequently the labour services of the villeins were being augmented.[35] The agricultural labourer as we understand him, a landless man working solely for wages in cash, was almost unknown.

All the arrangements of the manor aimed at supplying labour for the cultivation of the lord’s demesne, and he had three chief officers to superintend it: 

1.  The seneschal, who answers to our modern steward or land agent, and where there were several manors supervised all of them.  He attended to the legal business and held the manor courts.  It was his duty to be acquainted with every particular of the manor, its cultivation, extent, number of teams, condition of the stock, &c.  He was also the legal adviser of his lord; in fact, very much like his modern successor.