labour services were tasks undertaken by tenants as part of their obligations to landowners for the right to farm or use land. These duties came to be seen as part of the rent paid by tenants under the ‘manorial system’ during the Middle Ages. One of the definitions of villein status was performing labour services at the will of the lord because, in theory, the obligations were unrestricted. In practice, the levying of labour services depended on the farming regime of the lord of the manor. When cash crops were especially profitable, as during the 13th cent., lords of the manor increased their directly farmed demesne land and used labour services to take advantage of good weather conditions: for spreading manure, ploughing the arable, repairing and maintaining boundaries and ditches, gathering crops of hay and grain, and carrying them to barns or markets.

Precise statements of labour services owed by landholders to the lord of the manor were set out in ‘custumals’, documents produced in manorial courts under oath. Villeins, tenants of the lord of the manor, resisted attempts to extend labour services. During the 14th cent. landowners found it profitable to commute labour services for fixed cash payments. Declining demesne farming by landowners after the middle of the 14th cent. reduced labour services and they ceased to be a determinant of social status by the 16th cent. A few labour services survived in economically underdeveloped areas until the early 18th cent., as in parts of rural west Lancashire.

Ian John Ernest Keil