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Cap'in know all 'bout him; now he give Nick some more last quit-rent?" "Last, indeed, it will be, then, Nick; for I have already paid you twice for your rights." "Discovery wort' great deal, cap'in see what great man he make pale- face." "Ay, but your discovery, Nick, is not of that sort." "What sort, den?" demanded Nick, with the rapidity of lightning.
The terms on which these allotments have been granted are: that the estates shall be fully ceded for ever to all who shall continue to cultivate for five years, or more; that they shall be free of all taxes for the first ten years; but after that period to pay an annual quit-rent of one shilling.
The price fixed on land was forty shillings, with the annual quit-rent of one shilling, for one hundred acres; and it was provided that no one should, in word or deed, affront or wrong any Indian without incurring the same penalty as if the offence had been committed against a fellow-planter; that strict precautions should be taken against fraud in the quality of goods sold to them; and that all differences between the two nations should be adjudged by twelve men, six of each.
The time shall come, John Ball, when that dream of thine that this shall one day be, shall be a thing that men shall talk of soberly, and as a thing soon to come about, as even with thee they talk of the villeins becoming tenants paying their lord quit-rent; therefore, hast thou done well to hope it; and, if thou heedest this also, as I suppose thou heedest it little, thy name shall abide by thy hope in those days to come, and thou shalt not be forgotten."
The strength of their turreted walls was more than supplemented by the length of their purses, and such immunity from the encroachments of lords and king as they could not otherwise win, they contrived to buy. Arbitrary taxation they generally escaped by compounding with the royal exchequer in a fixed sum or quit-rent, known as the firma burgi.
The lord of the manor claimed these; and the difficulty was thus adjusted: The builders were to receive the value of their tenements from the lord of the manor, and were to remain permanent tenants for life on payment of a small percentage, interest upon the purchase-money, as quit-rent. On their deaths the cottages were to become the property of the lord of the manor.
In the following century a successor of Severin gave it in fief to Norbert, a younger son of the house of Normandy, in consideration of an annual quit-rent of sixty sous, and on the condition that the city of Beaumont and its church should remain free and unincumbered.
The peasant of the period was of three kinds: the leibeigener or serf, who was little better than a slave, who cultivated his lord's domain, upon whom unlimited burdens might be fixed, and who was in all respects amenable to the will of his lord; the höriger or villein, whose services were limited alike in kind and amount; and the freier or free peasant, who merely paid what was virtually a quit-rent in kind or in money for being allowed to retain his holding or status in the rural community under the protection of the manorial lord.
To pay the quit-rent and taxes the peasant hires himself to the neighboring lord to mow his corn at sixty-five cents an acre a price which falls to forty cents an acre before the harvest is completed. At the most, he can earn an average of twenty-five cents a day, for his food has been poor, his body is weak, his hands tremble, his scythe is antiquated and blunders at its work.
Sometimes, however, a freeman held his land without quit-rent, but still had numerous obligations which had survived from medieval times, such as the annual sum paid for a "military protection" which he neither demanded nor received. The second obligation was to the church the tithe or tenth, which usually amounted every year to a twelfth or a fifteenth of the gross produce of the peasant's land.
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