n their labor
services was also, as will be seen, becoming less.

When a villain's labor services had been commuted into money, his
position must have risen appreciably. One of the main characteristics
of his position as a villain tenant had been the uncertainty of his
services, the fact that during the days in which he must work for his
lord he could be put to any kind of labor, and that the number of days
he must serve was itself only restricted by the custom of the manor
His services once commuted into a definite sum of money, all
uncertainty ceased. Moreover, his money payments to the lord, although
rising from an entirely different source, were almost indistinguishable
from the money rents paid by the freeholder. Therefore, serf though he
might still be in legal status, his position was much more like that
of a freeman.

*32. The Abandonment of Demesne Farming.*--A still more important change
than the commutation of services was in progress during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries. This was the gradual withdrawal of the lords
of manors from the cultivation of the demesne farms. From very early
times it had been customary for lords of manors to grant out small
portions of the demesne, or of previously uncultivated land, to
tenants at a money rent. The great demesne farm, however, had been
still kept up as the centre of the agricultural system of the vill.
But now even this was on many manors rented out to a tenant or group
of tenants. The earliest known instances are just at the beginning of
the fourteenth century, but the labor troubles of the latter half of
the century made the process more usual, and within the next hundred
years the demesne lands seem to have been practically all rented out
to tenants. In other words, whereas, during the earlier Middle Ages
lords of manors had usually carried on the cultivation of the demesne
lands themselves, under the administration of their bailiffs and with
the labor of the villains, making their profit by obtaining a food
supply for their own households or by selling the surplus products,
now they gave up their cultivation and rented them out to some one
else, making their profit by receiving a money payment as rent. They
became therefore landlords of the modern type. A typical instance of
this change is where the demesne land of the manor of Wilburton in
Cambridgeshire, consisting of 246 acres of arable land and 42 acres
of meadow, was rented in 1426 to one of the