1. See Ault, W. O., Open-Field Farming in Medieval England: A Study of Village By-Laws (London, 1972)Google Scholar.

2. Boissonade, P., Life and Work in Medieval Europe, trans. Power, Eileen (London, 1937), p. 147Google Scholar.

3. Laslett, Peter, The World We Have Lost (London, 1965), p. 60Google Scholar.

4. Here we are concerned with the concept of solidarity in the medieval village, which we shall measure by the inclination of villagers to take risks for their neighbors. Thus, “solidarity” will be treated as if loyalty were an essential part of its definition. Both solidarity and loyalty appear to require a willingness to make sacrifices for some cause or other person(s).

5. As every historian of the medieval period knows, the vast majority of persons living in the Middle Ages were peasants. The “urban” population did not exceed that of the “rural” until well into the nineteenth century, even in England, the pioneer of the industrial world. Consequently, the historian cannot reach much of an understanding of the history of the Middle Ages without at least an occasional glance at the activities of the peasants of the era.

6. Two classic studies in medieval social history, Homans, G. C., English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1942)Google Scholar and Raftis, J. A., Tenure and Mobility: Studies in the Social History of the Mediaeval Village (Toronto, 1964)Google Scholar, place great emphasis on court rolls. Professor Homans states: “Almost every court roll has something important to tell about the social order of England in the Middle Ages.” (Homans, , English Villagers, p. 9Google Scholar).

7. See Firth, Raymond, Elements of Social Organization (3rd ed.; London, 1971), pp. 41–79Google Scholar for a discussion of this approach.

8. Baildon, W. P.et al. (eds.), Court Rolls of the Manor of Wakefield [West Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series] (Wakefield, 1945), V, 181Google Scholar.

9. For a court roll entry in which a man was ordered to find a pledge for his daughter, see Massingberd, W. O. (ed.), Court Rolls of the Manor of Ingoldmells in the County of Lincoln (London, 1902), p. 1Google Scholar; and for an entry in which a man was required to find a pledge for his wife, see Amphlett, J. (ed.), Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales 1272-1307 (Oxford, 1910), I, 286Google Scholar. At Elton, the pledgee himself virtually always had the responsibility for finding pledges. The one exception to this rule can be found in the 1350 court roll in which the constables were amerced for not having obtained pledges for a particular villager. (Ratcliff, S. C. (ed.), Elton Manorial Records 1279-1351 (Cambridge, 1946), p. 392.)Google Scholar We do not know the reason for this exception. Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that pledgees could not obtain their own pledges in this period of chaos and uncertainty. That is to say, few persons would have been willing to assume responsibility for the behavior of others during the Black Death. Consequently, the lord, in order to protect his own interests, might have held the village constables responsible for the peasants when they did not possess pledges. On the matter of the impermanence of the pledging arrangement, see Pimsler, Martin, “Personal Pledging in a Medieval English Village” (Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1975), pp. 51–52, and 199Google Scholar, and Jenkinson, Hilary and Formoy, Beryl E. R. (eds.), Select Cases in the Exchequer of Pleas [Selden Society] (London, 1932), p. 106Google Scholar.

10. Logan, F. D., Excommunication and the Secular Arm in Mediaeval England: A Study in Legal Procedure From the Thirteenth to the Sixteenth Century (Toronto, 1968), p. 128Google Scholar; Pimsler, , “Pledging,” pp. 109–110Google Scholar.

11. See Ratcliff, , Elton, p. 30Google Scholar.

12. Morris, William Alfred, The Frankpledge System (London, 1910), pp. 1, 10Google Scholar; De Haas, Elsa, Antiquities of Bail: Origin and Development in Criminal Cases to the Year 1275 (New York, 1940), p. 27Google Scholar. Also, see Maitland, F. W. (ed.), Select Pleas in Manorial and Other Seignorial Courts, Vol. I: Reigns of Henry III and Edward I [Selden Society] (London, 1889), xxxGoogle Scholar.

13. See Gross, Charles (ed.), Select Cases From the Law Merchant A.D. 1270-1638, Vol. I: Local Courts [Selden Society] (London, 1908), 62Google Scholar.

14. Pimsler, , “Pledging,” pp. 32–33, 117–18Google Scholar; De Haas, Elsa, “Concepts of the Nature of Bail,” University of Toronto Law Journal, VI (1946), 389–90Google Scholar.

15. De Windt, Edwin Brezette, Land and People in Holywell-cum-Needingworth: Structures of Tenure and Patterns of Social Organization in an East Midlands Village 1252-1457 (Toronto, 1972)Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., p. 249.

17. The number of pledges probably exceeds 96, since pledges who had the same surname as their pledgees were omitted from this total, even though no clear relationship was indicated in the documents. The widest reasonable categorization has been employed in order to bias the evidence as far as possible against our position that pledging was often an extra-familial relationship. Since a very high proportion (over 90 per cent) of the recorded instances of pledging at Elton appear in the pre-Black Death court rolls, and since there is a relative paucity of information about the pledges in the later documents, our statistics in this study will be confined to the court rolls before 1350. These court rolls pertain to the following years: 1279, 1292, 1294, 1300, 1301, 1306, 1307, 1308, 1312, 1313, 1316, 1318, 1320, 1321, 1322, 1325, 1331, and 1342. The above documents, with the exception of the 1313 court roll (PRO SC2/179/17 m.5,d.) have been edited by S. C. Ratcliff. (See n.9 above.)

18. Males constituted virtually all of the pledges. Only one entry in the Elton court rolls cites a female pledge. (Ratcliff, , Elton, p. 259Google Scholar.) Of course, the name recorded in this entry may have been a scribal error, and the real pledge, in fact, could have been a man. On the other hand, this entry might have represented a special case. An entry in the Wakefield court rolls suggests that women at Wakefield could have acted as pledges, but only if their husbands had died. (Baildon, et al., Wakefield, II, 36Google Scholar.) If there were a similar custom at Elton, this would account for the one instance of pledging by a woman in that village.

19. This number does not include “one-for-the-other” pledging entries, data which have been omitted entirely from our findings. The phrase “pledge, one for the other” (plegius alter alterius) appears at the end of a number of court roll entries. (For example, “De Ricardo le Wyse quia non venit ad metendum bladum domini per vnum diem in autumpno quando summonitus fuit vi d. De Ricardo Blakeman pro eodem vi d. De Wıllelmo Harpe pro eodem vi d. De Iohanne Gamel pro eodem vi d. De Philippo de Bryngton' pro eodem vi. d. De Andrea Gamel pro eodem vi d. De Willelmo Atte Brok' pro eodem vi d. (De) Iohanne Abouebrok' pro eodem vi d. De Iohanne le Neweman pro eodem vi d. plegius alter alterius.” (Ratcliff, (ed.), Elton, p. 193.)Google Scholar) We have not included these entries because the element of choice of a personal pledge does not appear to have existed in these cases. Most likely, the court simply assigned the persons who committed a common offense to pledge for one another. We also have omitted the entries referring to pledging by a few villagers at Elton because of particularly difficult identification problems. Two men had the name Robert Gamel and two were called John Gamel. Since it is often unclear to which John Gamel or Robert Gamel a given entry referred, exclusion from the pledging statistics was judged the least confusing way to handle the matter. Thus, our figure of 873 recorded instances of pledging at Elton before the Black Death does not include alter alterius entries and entries in which John Gamel or Robert Gamel served as pledges.

20. Although we have no evidence from Elton on this subject, we do possess abundant data from other regions which suggests that people often avoided holding office. Baildon, et al., Wakefield, III, 71Google Scholar. “The whole of the graveship of Wakefield elected John Cay as grave of Wakefield; he refused office and his land was seized into the lord's hand.” Ibid., IV, 144. “John son of Nalk bastard begotten upon a bond woman (neif), is therefore a bond tenant (nativus), and fines 6 s. 8 d. for this acknowledgment, and 40 d. to save himself from being grave this year.” Amphlett, , Hales, I, 251Google Scholar. “Philippus Sweyn dat domino quatuor denarios ut amoveatur ab officio constabularii (Finis iiii d.).” Massingberd, , Ingoldmells, p. 131Google Scholar. “Wm son of Henry Pullayn of Burgh was elected by the whole homage to the office of grave, and afterwards the said Wm came at Bolingbroke, and made fine to the lady for being released from his office for the whole life of the lady Countess, pledge Robert Thory.” Bickley, Francis B. (ed.), The Little Red Book of Bristol (Bristol, 1900), II, 46Google Scholar. “Whereas within these times manv of the most notable of the town have withdrawn and absented themselves from the town, some to avoid being officers and others being present at the election of the officers and servants of the town, whereby the town has sustained great damage and evil.” University of Chicago. Bacon collection f.1, m.16d. (Although this manuscript is numbered 17, it is, in fact, the sixteenth leaf.) “Adam le Parmunt dat vi d. ne amplius sit temptator ceruisie. Et Willelmus Slawe ponatur loco suo.” Ibid. “Henricus filius Simonis dat vi d. ne amplius sit temptator ceruisie. Et Thomas Dokr' ponatur loco suo.” Ibid., f.2, m.19. “Reginald Cristemesse dat vi d. pro licencia amouendi de officio Capitalis plegii.”

21. A fourteenth century Irish document (from the county of Cork) is relevant in this context: “And further in the matter of receiving pledges of people who are to be attached, whether denizen or foreign, let no pledges be received except denizen and sufficient persons who have enough movables within the franchise whereby they can be distrained for the amercements if they are amerced …” Bateson, Mary (ed.), Borough Customs [Selden Society] (London, 1904), I, 24Google Scholar.

22. The two extant lay subsidy rolls for Elton pertain to the years 1327 and 1332 (PRO E179/122/4 m.4 and PRO E179/122/7 m.6 respectively). With regard to the exemption of the poor from payment of the subsidy taxes, James Field Willard stated “as a result of this provision for excusing the property of the poor from the burden of taxation there must have been many people throughout England whose names never appeared in the assessment rolls.” (Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property 1290 to 1334: A Study in Mediaeval English Financial Administration (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 87–88Google Scholar.) It was not only the indigent who were omitted from the subsidy rolls. Referring to persons not appearing in the documents, Willard noted “some of these may have been extremely poor, but others may have had goods valued at many times the minimum amount of property to be taxed, and yet, because their goods were not for sale or were otherwise excused, would not appear among the listed property holders. We are not necessarily dealing with paupers when we consider the people whose goods were not taxed. In fact, when we enter the rural districts we may be dealing with men who had a fair share of worldly goods.” (Ibid., p. 174.)

23. Raftis, , Tenure, p. 72Google Scholar. Referring to the pledges of excommunicates in royal courts, F. D. Logan tells us: “It would be unrealistic to suppose that men undertook the obligations of mainprise out of pure altruism or Christian charity; surely the excommunicate recompensed his mainpernors in some way.” (Logan, , Excommunication, p. 130Google Scholar, n.) Also, see Luchaire, Achille, Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus, trans. Krehbiel, Edward Benjamin (New York, 1967), p. 189Google Scholar.