amount of ploughing on the domain land
(as it was called later on), and also to give what was called a
_corvee_, that is to say, an unfixed amount of ploughing, which the
steward could demand every week when it was needed; the distinction
corresponds to the distinction between _week work_ and _boon work_ in
the later Middle Ages. The second kind of labour which every owner of a
farm had to do on the monks' land was called handwork, that is to say,
he had to help repair buildings, or cut down trees, or gather fruit, or
make ale, or carry loads--anything, in fact, which wanted doing and
which the steward told him to do. It was by these services that the
monks got their own seigniorial farm cultivated. On all the other days
of the week these hard-worked tenants were free to cultivate their own
little farms, and we may be sure that they put twice as much elbow
grease into the business.

But their obligation did not end here, for not only had they to pay
services, they also had to pay certain rents to the big house. There
were no State taxes in those days, but every man had to pay an army due,
which Charlemagne exacted from the abbey, and which the abbey exacted
from its tenants; this took the form of an ox and a certain number of
sheep, or the equivalent in money: 'He pays to the host two shillings of
silver' comes first on every freeman's list of obligations. The farmers
also had to pay in return for any special privileges granted to them by
the monks; they had to carry a load of wood to the big house, in return
for being allowed to gather firewood in the woods, which were jealously
preserved for the use of the abbey; they had to pay some hogsheads of
wine for the right to pasture their pigs in the same precious woods;
every third year they had to give up one of their sheep for the right to
graze upon the fields of the chief manse; they had to pay a sort of
poll-tax of 4_d_. a head. In addition to these special rents every
farmer had also to pay other rents in produce; every year he owed the
big house three chickens and fifteen eggs and a large number of planks,
to repair its buildings; often he had to give it a couple of pigs;
sometimes corn, wine, honey, wax, soap, or oil. If the farmer were also
an artisan and made things, he had to pay the produce of his craft; a
smith would have to make lances for the abbey's contingent to the army,
a carpenter had to make barrels and hoops and vine props, a wheelwright
had to make a