arly an intentional reduction in the
burden of villain tenure. This fact makes emphasis upon the payment of
money as the distinguishing feature of the changed relations between
landlord and tenant in this period misleading. There was every
precedent for requiring a money payment in the place of services not
wanted. When, therefore, a great many services were simply allowed to
lapse, it is an indication that it was impossible to exact the
payment. It makes little difference whether the services were commuted
at a lower rate than that at which they had formerly been "sold" or
whether the villain was simply held accountable for a smaller number
of services at the old rate; in either case the rent was reduced, and
the burden of the tenant was less.

The reduction of rent is thus the characteristic and fundamental
feature of all of the changes of land tenure during this period. This
fact is ignored by historians who suppose the chief factor in the
commutation movement to have been the desire of prosperous villains to
rid themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom. Vinogradoff, for
instance, in his preface to the monograph from which most of the
foregoing illustrations have been drawn, has nothing at all to say of
the reduction of rent and the poverty of the tenants when he is
speaking of the various circumstances attending the introduction of
money payments.

In the particular case under discussion the cultural policy of
William of Wykeham may have suggested arrangements in commutation
of labour services and rents in kind. In other cases similar
results were connected with war expenditures and town life. In so
far the initiative in selling services came from the class of
landowners. But there were powerful tendencies at work in the
life of the peasants which made for the same result. The most
comprehensive of these tendencies was connected, it seems to me,
with the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains
under a system of customary dues. When rents and services became
settled and lost their elasticity, roughly speaking, in the
course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the
surplus of profits from agriculture was bound to collect in the
hands of those who received them directly from the soil, and it
was natural for these first receivers to turn the proceeds
primarily towards an improvement of their social conditi