On walking inside Alan saw that most of the building was comprised of the usual single Hall, but that somewhat unusually one end of the building had been divided off into two rooms. The light in the Hall was dim, mainly cast by a roaring central fire and a few smoking rush torches set into brackets on the posts that ran in two rows down the Hall, supporting the roof. The smoke from the fire and rushes cast a haze in the air and caught at the throat. The Hall was sparsely furnished with a few benches and tables, mainly drawn near the central fireplace; a thick layer of reasonably fresh rushes were underfoot. A quick look through the door into each of the rooms showed one to be a bedchamber with a large bed and the other a solar or private sitting room.
“Firstly, show me the strong-box and give me the key,” Alan ordered Kendrick.
As was usual the strongbox was in the bedchamber, and once he had secured the key Alan was not sufficiently ill-mannered to check what it contained before he spoke to the Hall staff. Alan had Kendrick call the staff together, asked each their names and addressed them together, letting them know that, provided they performed their duties properly, their positions were secure. Alan then asked Kendrick to call a meeting of all the freemen of the village the following day, to be held at the tithe-barn at noon with the church bell to be rung before the meeting, and before that for Alan to meet with both the village head-man Tolland, a wealthy cheorl, and also the village priest.
Next Alan went into the bedchamber and used the key to open the strongbox. There was very little money in the box, less than?1, and no books of account. Most importantly it contained the ownership records for the manor, the landboc, confirming the grant of land to Estan by King Edward. Alan went back out into the Hall and sat on a bench at a scrubbed wooden table near the fire, still with his thick green woollen cloak wrapped around him as he ate a bowl of thick vegetable pottage and warmed his hands on a cup of mulled ale.
When he had finished eating he collected the bottle of ink that he had set by the fire to thaw, and a quill and parchment from his bag, before returning to the table and queried Kendrick about the accounts. He was told that there were no books of account, Kendrick using the ‘poor illiterate and ignorant servant’ routine. On being pressed Kendrick agreed that perhaps there were some books that Estan had kept and promised to look for them amongst his former master’s possessions.
Alan then had Kendrick sit and specify the obligations of each cheorl, sokeman, gebur and cottar and the names and details of each slave, while he made notes with quill and ink on parchment for future reference.
That night Alan slept in the bedchamber. His men slept in the solar and took turns to stand guard outside the adjacent doors of the two rooms, while the remainder slept.
At Terce the following morning Tolland arrived. Life in the country was more difficult than life in the city for several reasons; one being the difficulty in arranging and attending meetings. In the absence of abbey bells ringing every three hours, time was largely a matter of mutual consent.
Tolland was a large and strongly built man of middle years with dark hair. He was a wealthy freeman, as was shown by the well-made but not ostentatious brown woollen tunic and trews that he wore. He brought with him his deputy, Erian the Taverner, a portly man of medium height.
Alan grasped forearms with both and invited them to sit at the high table and eat and drink as they talked. Alan had Tolland give a general description of the village and its inhabitants and the way that cultivation of the land occurred. “This looks like a prosperous and well-run community. I have two ploughs and teams, and the men of the village have three,” said Alan. “There are four hides of land- that is 480 acres, of which about one third is in my demesne. The king has decreed that geld will again be payable, and the village assessment is 8 shillings a year. One third of that is payable by me. That’s two shillings and seven pence. The rest is payable by the freemen of the village, payable in instalments each Quarter Day. For the freemen of the village to pay the geld each Quarter Day, the first on Lady Day in just under three months, is likely to take food from the mouths and clothes from the backs of your villagers. That is not in the interests of either myself or the villagers, who I see as being my people.”
Toland frowned and nodded his acknowledgement of what Alan had said. “Why the imposition of the geld, after fifteen years? I would have thought with the coming of the Normans we would be safer from attack by the Danes, rather than more vulnerable. Does the king intend to reintroduce the fleet that Edward paid off fifteen years ago, and hire more huscarles?” asked Tolland astutely.
“I doubt it,” replied Alan honestly. “It’s a revenue-raising exercise that we all must pay, Norman and English alike. In addition, I have to provide six mounted and armoured men-at-arms for forty days a year- not just from this village but from all the manors I have been given in this Hundred. At least myself, and the villagers in my honour, do not have to pay the Heriot that many of the thegns and even the Church will have to pay. In the end it is the freemen who suffer, as all the wealth of the land comes from their efforts. What is my problem is also the problem of the village, down to the lowest slave. And vice versa- what is the village’s problem is my problem, as I’m responsible for all that happens here. So we have a problem that affects us all.
“As you know, I’ve called a village meeting for later today. I would suggest that you seek the counsel of the other senior cheorls in the village. My suggestion is that what we should do is to increase production so that we have more to sell and can pay the taxes. I see three ways we can do this.
“Firstly, there is waste land outside the area that the village now cultivates, which can relatively easily be brought into cultivation. It is further away and less fertile than the land currently used, but at least we won’t have to clear it of trees as this Hundred is largely open land.
“Secondly, we can increase the number of saltpans we have in operation. Currently I have one on the estuary, one on Alresford Creek and two on Barfleet Creek. Over the next few weeks I’ll be using the labour owed to me to build another salt-pan for my demesne in each location. Salt is a high-value item that we can all sell easily. I suggest that the village also increases its salt pans. I understand it has two pans on the estuary, one on Alresford Creek and three on Barfleet Creek. Unless we have a particularly wet summer the salt pans bring in a good and regular income with minimal work.” Alan didn’t mention that all of the salt would be processed through his salt house, with him retaining ten percent of the salt processed for other producers.
“Thirdly, I’ll be changing my demesne land over from the two-field cultivation system to the three-field system that is becoming common on the continent. Instead of two fields, one in cultivation and one lying fallow, there are three. One is planted for winter wheat and barley, one is planted with spring crops such as wheat, oats, barley, or rye and the third is either left fallow or preferably planted with legumes- beans and alfalfa. This increases the land under cultivation by one third. The planting rate is also to be increased on my land from two bushels of seed per acre to three. With proper fertilizing and marling of the land I can get six times the seed return for wheat, or more, instead of the usual four. I’ll have just over 100 acres of land under cultivation each year instead of 70 and I’ll more than double the number bushels I harvest, with little impact of labour because the ploughings and plantings take place twice a year, but each occupies less time.”
Tolland was an intelligent man who could read and write. Moreover, like all farmers he could count and could calculate bushels per acre in his head. However, again like all farmers, he was also very conservative. What had been good enough for his grandfather on the same land should be good enough for him. However, he did appreciate the need to increase village income to pay the new tax, or suffer reduced living standards in good years and starvation in bad years. He promised to discuss the ideas with the other village elders and raise the matter at the folkmoot called by him at Alan’s request later that day.