yardland

That much is clear, but how did the small landowner of a yardland or less fare in these circumstances?

The charity is known to have been in existence by 1336, when it owned two cottages, a close and half a yardland.

"Born at Harpecote, a younger son of a free man who farmed a yardland there.

And here we are, master, bereft, to make a new start from villeinry, if there's a yardland to be had under any lord.

"He has a half yardland by Preston, and works with the sheep at the manor of Upton."

"And his yardland with him?

Sleapford has 12 half villeins, and Teyne has 5, each holding one half yardland.

Godwin held Worldham during this period, and the land was assessed at 1 hide and 1 yardland.

In Elizabethan Willingham the typical holding was no more than half a yardland, a size which in practice varied from 14 to over 20 acres.

Hugh de Chacombe gave the priory endowments including a yardland at South Newington.

"In the village of Sleapford there are 28 full villeins, and in the hamlet of Teyne 13, each holding one yardland.

The whole of his yardland would not bring him in a penny if it rested with him to work it, it's the boy who makes shift to get a crop from it.

"But, Father, he has only two-thirds of a yardland, and no son, and the two girls and their grandam to feed-where should he get thirty shillings, or twenty, either?

And Aelfric in his turn was a younger son, and foolishly accepted service in the manor household when his elder had family enough to run his yardland without him.

At an average of 6d. per acre the fairly common assessment of 20s. might well indicate a more or less standard yardland of some 30 - 40 (customary) acres, depending on what buildings were included, if any.

Only a little further up the social scale, another quarter or more of the rural inhabitants had tenements varying in size up to a yardland, which in Cambridgeshire seems to have been about 30 and 40 acres.

A free man, this Edric was said to be, farming a yardland as a rent-paying tenant of his lord, a dwindling phenomenon in a country where a tiller of the soil was increasingly tied to it by customary services.

English translation of the preceding " Ranulf de Warren gave the monks of Lewes one yardland at Estun, in Norfolk: and William, his son, the tithe of the land which one Godvine held at Gelham."

William was a small farmer occupying a messuage and yardland as a copyholder in inheritance, together with half an acre of meadow and another piece of the 'Farme Landes' of unstated dimensions, as a tenant at will, for a total rent of 11s.

In the reign of Henry II (1154-89) Hugh de Chacombe, lord of the manor of Chacombe in Northamptonshire founded a priory of Augustinian canons in Chacombe and gave it a yardland in the parish of South Newington.

Aelfric's father was born free as you or I, but younger son in a holding that was none too large even for one, and rather than have it split, when his father died, he left it whole for his brother, and took a villein yardland that had fallen without heirs, on my husband's manor.

And now all he, Cadwaladr, had to do was go to the meeting, behave himself seemly before other eyes, as he knew well how to do with grace, and in private surrender not one whit of his demands, and he would regain all, every yardland that had been taken from him, every man of his former following.