able: the new holder of land is
described as "_electus per totum homagium ad hoc compulsus_," a phrase
which is frequently found also in the entries of fines paid on some of
the Winchester manors after the Black Death.[62]

This method of compulsion was useful to some extent, but there were
limits beyond which it could not be pushed. Five men of Therfield in
1351 were ordered to take up customary land, and several of them left
the manor rather than obey. "_Vendiderunt quod habuerunt et
recesserunt nocitante._"[63] At Nailesbourne, in the same year,
"_Robertus le Semenour compulsus finivit et clam recessit et ea tenere
recusavit_."[64] The problem which confronted landowners during the
Black Death was not so much an absolute lack of men on the manors, as
a stubborn unwillingness on the part of these men to hold land. There
were enough men left by the pestilence, but they were determined to
avoid taking up the tenements whose holders had died. The pressure
which was brought upon the villains to induce them to take up land and
to prevent them from leaving the manor could not prevent the
desertions, which had begun before the pestilence, and which took away
the men who would naturally have supplied the places of those who
died. The whole village must have been anxious to prevent the
desertion of these men, for the community was held responsible for the
services from vacant tenements, when they failed to provide a tenant.
At Meon, for instance, each of twenty-six tenants paid 1 _d._ in
place of works due from a vacant holding, according to an arrangement
which had been made before the Black Death,[65] and at Burwell, in
1350, when three villains left the manor, their land was "_tradita
toto homagio ad faciendum servicia et consuetudines_."[66] In spite of
the deterring force which must have been exerted by public opinion
under these conditions, and in spite of the aggressive measures taken
by bailiffs to prevent desertion and to recapture those who had fled,
the records are full of the names of those who had been successful in
making their escape. Throughout the latter half of the fourteenth
century and the first part of the fifteenth there was a gradual
leakage from the Winchester manors. "Villeins were apt 'to go away
secretly' and to be no more found."[67] Page describes a similar
tendency on the part of villains of the manors whose records he has
examined. At Weston, three villains deserted in 1354. At Woolston in
1357