Bondage Holdings, Unfree Tenants And Free Tenants

A bondage holding would typically comprise a messuage (building plot) and a parcel of arable and meadow, 24 - 30 acres being the standard allotment in Northumberland. Bondmen were ‘unfree’ tenants, also known as customary tenants, villeins or tenants in villeinage.

With their viable tenancies, the Bondmen generally formed the core of the township community and the foundation of the manor’s financial productivity, in the lowlands at least. In addition there would typically be a number of freeholders, as well as other categories of unfree tenant, such as cotmen - smallholders who worked as day labourers.

Unfree tenants generally bore a greater weight of rents, labour services and other obligations to their lord, by comparison with free tenants, although it should be noted that even the latter did not ‘own’ their holdings outright, in the modern sense of the term.  Most importantly, whilst unfree tenure was determined by the custom of the manor, regulated through the lord’s manorial court, free tenure was governed by common law, with the result that free tenants paid rents fixed in perpetuity, could sell or grant their holdings without seigneurial interference and could sue their lord in the royal courts (Lomas 1996, 76-7; Bailey 2002, 26).

Free tenancies were generally held in return for performing certain limited services, principally attendance at the baron’s court and support for its operations (an obligation known as ‘suit of court’), and the payment of a fixed cash rent or perhaps a pound of spices (Lomas 1996, 19; Bailey 2002, 27-8).