nearly a dozen types are mentioned, such as ox-herds, shepherds, goat-herds, cheese-makers, barn-keepers, woodmen, hedgers and so on, but not much is told about them individually, except details as to the cost of their maintenance.
The remarkable fullness of the details, furnished by the author of the Rectitudines, and the great interest of his account as the earliest known picture of a large English landed estate, naturally lead us to speculate how far it is to be considered a valid picture for England generally. The answer seems to be, that it had little application outside Wessex and Mercia, and even in those provinces it is difficult to make it altogether tally with the conditions found in the majority of the counties a generation or two later on, as depicted in the Domesday Survey. It fits best in fact, when compared with Domesday, with the counties along the Welsh border from Gloucestershire to Cheshire; for there is an obvious parallel between these geneatus of the Rectitudines with their riding services and those radmanni or radchenistres who were prominent in those counties in 1065, and who were clearly riding men after the style of the "equites" set up by Oswald on the estates of the church of Worcester in Edgar's day. It agrees also remarkably well with an account we have of the labour customs in use at Tidenham in the Fores of Dean, drawn up about 1060[1]. This village lies in the triangle formed by the junction of the Wye with the Severn, and in Edward's reign belonged to the monks of Bath, who had sublet it to Archbishop Stigand for his life. It was an extensive estate divided into several hamlets and was assessed for taxation at 30 hides; nine of these hides were inland and twenty-one gesettesland, divided into yardlands occupied some by geneatas and some by geburas. The account speaks of these yardlands as gyrda gafollandes; and then sets out the services of the two classes of tenantry, remarking that "to Tidenham belong many labour services," "to Dyddanhamme gebyreð micil weore ræden." As in the Rectitudines, the geneat's chief duty was to act as an escort, take messages and do carting, while the gebur had not only many gafols to render but owed heavy week-work and ploughing services. It looks then as if the Rectitudines must apply primarily to this part of Mercia, and as if the tract probably had its origin on one or other of the great church fiefs which dominated the valley of the Lower Severn. On the other hand it is impossible to suppose that the main conditions on the larger ecclesiastical or lay estates in Wessex were not to some extent the same; for geneat and gebur, yardland and gesettesland, are all mentioned as West Saxon institutions in the laws of Ine, together with the gafol geldu, the lord's gerefa and the taking up of land to weore and to gafole. We know too that King Alfred had his geneatus, and the abbeys of Glastonbury and Abingdon had their tainlands and geburlands in the ninth and tenth centuries; while yardlands, half-yardlands and
- ↑ Birch, Cart. Sax. No. 928. Seebohm, English Village Community, pp. 148-157.
