Free Tenure Research Articles

The model of tenure choice in life cycle of Poles

Housing tenure decisions depend on individual preferences and the surrounding economic conditions, and change along economic changes and the development of the housing market. Poland is a post-socialist economy that has observed significant improvements in the housing market. The emergence of housing developers that increase the housing stock rather fast, a housing finance system and the still slow emergence of a private rental market allowed many people to make free tenure choices and to become independent. In this part of the paper we present the literature review and the historical background of the housing market in Poland.

Freemen, Free Labor, and Republican Discourses of Liberty in Early Modern England

This article examines the development of popular discourses of liberty as independence emerging from the struggles between peasants and landlords over the course of the late medieval and early modern periods. This discourse, relating to the aspirations of the dependent peasantry for free status, free tenure, and free labor, articulated a conception of independence that overlapped with the emerging republican discourse of the seventeenth century. However, whereas republicanism focuses almost exclusively on the arbitrary powers of the monarchical state, the popular tradition emphasizes freedom from the arbitrary powers of landlordism. After a brief introduction to the republican conception of liberty and a discussion of the dependent peasantry in England, the work of Gerrard Winstanley is presented as an innovative synthesis of popular and republican discourses of freedom as independence from the arbitrary powers of exploitation.

From the memory of the act to the act itself.The evolution of written records as proof of jural acts in England, 11th to 17th century

This article traces the trajectory from distrust to trust in written records as proof of the conveyance of land in England between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries. During that period of time, such records were transformed from an aide-memoire of an essentially oral act, to the indisputable proof of the act they recorded and, finally, to the very embodiment of the act itself. The article focuses specifically on one particular class of conveyance, i.e., transfers of freehold interests in land held by free tenure, on one particular form of conveyance, i.e., feoffments with livery of seisin, and on one particular type of record, i.e., the charters that recorded such conveyances. The article concludes that the ascension of written proof by the end of the 17th century is attributable to a number of factors, among them, the growth of royal jurisdiction over land, the rise of literacy, the growth of commerce, and an increasing distrust on the part of the judiciary in the capacity of a lay jury to properly assess written records.

The Mills of Medieval England by Richard Holt

Book Reviews The Mills of Medieval England. By Richard Holt. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Pp. x + 202; illustrations, notes, appen­ dixes, bibliography, index. $55.00. Richard Holt has provided historians of technology, as well as those who study broader social and economic issues, with a rigorous, comprehensive coverage of medieval England’s use of mills powered by water, wind, and horses. Beginning with the water mill, he shows that the simultaneous rise of the horizontal and vertical types was an accomplishment occurring centuries before the arrival of William the Conqueror. The spread of the 6,082 water mills reported in William’s Domesday Book was uneven and stimulated more by geographical factors than the isochronal patterns of diffusion recently suggested by Roger Reynolds. Variations in their estimated worth were also geo­ graphically determined: high-value mills were found on the major rivers near the higher densities of population, while those of low value were situated on the less significant watercourses and catered only to a few local inhabitants. In the approximately one hundred years following the Domesday Book (1086—1189), some water mills went out of use, to be replaced by others that generated greater revenue. During these years, water mills not only grew in value but also modestly in number, as indicated by the increase of the twenty-eight mills on the manors of the Glastonbury Abbey to thirty-one. The uneven distribution of water mills throughout England none­ theless remained. Horse mills, known since antiquity, could have been employed in areas where there was an insufficient supply of water, but Holt finds this to be purely speculative since the earliest reference to such a device in England is 1183. A more uniform dispersal of the edifices that ground the country’s grain came with the introduction of the windmill mounted on a post so that, when it turned, its vertical sail yards could take advantage of the currents of air. Contrary to Edward J. Kealey’s recent opinion that windmills of this sort first arrived in England between 1086 and 1137, Holt discovers the new mechanism appearing shortly before 1189 on both sides of the North Sea and English Channel. The post mill, invented in that area and diffused more than likely by seaborne travelers in touch with communities quite familiar with sailing ships, was not immediately accepted in great number, probably because of technical deficiencies. The 1230s and 1240s, however, witPermission to reprint a review printed in this section may be obtained only from the reviewer. 508 TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 509 nessed an extraordinary increase, particularly in those areas where adequate waterpower was lacking. In 1086, for example, the dry parts of Cambridgeshire had only two mills that were run by water, while in 1279 they possessed thirty-nine moved by wind. Although windmill building virtually ceased in England’s eastern counties after 1279, they continued to increase in the west and north of the country. Despite favorable geographical circumstances, southwestern England was the only area where a definite lack ofinterest in the windmill was displayed. With the proper distribution of the mills of medieval England established by means of clear, convincing statistics, Holt turns to their administrative, financial, and technological development. Some of his conclusions are indeed enlightening. Contrary to the views of Marc Bloch and Pierre Dockes, the obligation to use a lord’s mill because of his seigneurial or banal rights was highly flexible. Owing to the considerable number of independent mills held in hereditary free tenure or owned outright by knightly families, tenants of whatever status could take their grain where they pleased. If villeins were compelled to a suit of mill, they would risk being fined or simply pay for permission to use another edifice. The alternative of the hand mill was there, but mechanical milling was preferred. The only objection was the required toll, which for the villein could be extortionate. Moreover, the millers of these competitive establishments are not to be equated with their boisterous fictitious counterparts in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. As demesne servants, they received low salaries fortified by allowances or, in place of these remunerations, propor­ tions of the toll. If they...

The Essence of Medieval Urban Communities: the Vill of Westminster 12001540The Alexander Prize Essay

THE modern study of urban history began in the nineteenth century, and has since continued to reflect the preoccupations of its founders. For these historians, the towns of the European Middle Ages nurtured the seeds of political democracy and economic liberalism. Consequently, two great historians of the late nineteenth century, Charles Gross and F.W. Maitland, laid down criteria for the definition of towns which stressed above all the theme of administrative independence. It was declared that fundamental legal differences distinguished the borough from other forms of community, in particular the village. Burghal status, and the features associated with itsuch as the existence of a civil constitution, the right to representation in parliament, and the free tenure of propertyhave been exhaustively analysed by subsequent writers, not-ably James Tait. This emphasis upon the legal autonomy of towns has been strengthened by the prestige of the great medieval cities of Flanders, Germany and Italy, which repeatedly exemplify the trade centre fighting or bargaining to achieve communal independence from feudal overlords and control over the surrounding countryside. In accordance with this pattern of urban development, historians have tended to seek, as a necessary first stage of growth, evidence of such a struggle for self-governing independence.

POPULATION TRENDS AND AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENTS FROM THE WARWICKSHIRE HUNDRED ROLLS OF 1279

HE significance of the Hundred Rolls of 1279 has been appreciated since the end of the nineteenth century by those historians concerned with the social and economic evolution of England in the early middle ages. The latest, most comprehensive and authoritative treatment of this source is by E. A. Kosminsky;' his chief preoccupation, however, is with the correction of a previously over-simplified or idealized concept of manorial structure, and consequently much of his book is devoted to this central theme, together with the allied topics, of peasant tenure and rent, the evolution of social and economic differences within the peasantry, and the function of the small landowner in medieval England. These studies are based mainly on categories of information which the 1279 Hundred Rolls afford in reasonable detail and accuracy,2 although variably for each manor. Essentially these are: i. A survey of the demesne: arable land, and sometimes meadow, woodland, mills etc. 2. A survey of the land in peasant tenure and of the scattered possessions of the larger landlords, which includes a list of the tenants by name, the size of their holdings and the nature of their rent. These lists are sub-grouped in the folios for land in free tenure, in villeinage, and that held by cottagers. The contention of this paper is that problems outside the scope of Kosminsky's work can be clarified through a regional and comparative analysis of the Hundred Rolls. Accordingly from the unpublished Warwickshire folios 3 two groups of statistics have been abstracted: first, the number of the total landholding population, and secondly, the total of recorded arable land, given in both cases for the manorial unit. It is proposed to employ this information to assess: i. The regional pattern of population change by direct comparison with Domesday figures. 2. The relationship of these changes to agricultural development, specifically as expressed by the amount of arable land recorded in the manor.