[Illustration: _March--Breaking Clods_]

[Illustration: _August--Reaping_]

[Illustration: _December--Threshing and Winnowing_]

1. BODO AT HIS WORK

[Illustration: II. EMBARKATION OF THE POLOS AT VENICE]

Beside the seigniorial manse, there were a number of little dependent
manses. These belonged to men and women who were in various stages of
freedom, except for the fact that all had to do work on the land of the
chief manse. There is no need to trouble with the different classes, for
in practice there was very little difference between them, and in a
couple of centuries they were all merged into one common class of
medieval villeins. The most important people were those called _coloni_,
who were personally free (that is to say, counted as free men by the
law), but bound to the soil, so that they could never leave their farms
and were sold with the estate, if it were sold. Each of the dependent
manses was held either by one family or by two or three families which
clubbed together to do the work; it consisted of a house or houses, and
farm buildings, like those of the chief manse, only poorer and made of
wood, with ploughland and a meadow and perhaps a little piece of
vineyard attached to it. In return for these holdings the owner or joint
owners of every manse had to do work on the land of the chief manse for
about three days in the week. The steward's chief business was to see
that they did their work properly, and from every one he had the right
to demand two kinds of labour. The first was _field work_: every year
each man was bound to do a fixed amount of ploughing on the domain land