big house three chickens and fifteen eggs and a large number of planks,
to repair its buildings; often he had to give it a couple of pigs;
sometimes corn, wine, honey, wax, soap, or oil. If the farmer were also
an artisan and made things, he had to pay the produce of his craft; a
smith would have to make lances for the abbey's contingent to the army,
a carpenter had to make barrels and hoops and vine props, a wheelwright
had to make a cart. Even the wives of the farmers were kept busy, if
they happened to be serfs; for the servile women were obliged to spin
cloth or to make a garment for the big house every year.

All these things were exacted and collected by the steward, whom they
called _Villicus_, or _Major_ (Mayor). He was a very hard-worked man,
and when one reads the seventy separate and particular injunctions which
Charlemagne addressed to his stewards one cannot help feeling sorry for
him. He had to get all the right services out of the tenants, and tell
them what to do each week and see that they did it; he had to be careful
that they brought the right number of eggs and pigs up to the house, and
did not foist off warped or badly planed planks upon him. He had to look
after the household serfs too, and set them to work. He had to see about
storing, or selling, or sending off to the monastery the produce of the
estate and of the tenants' rents; and every year he had to present a
full and detailed account of his stewardship to the abbot. He had a
manse of his own, with services and rents due from it, and Charlemagne
exhorted his stewards to be prompt in their payments, so as to set a
good example. Probably his official duties left him very little time to
work on his own farm, and he would have to put in a man to work it for
him, as Charlemagne bade his stewards do. Often, however, he had
subordinate officials called _deans_ under him, and sometimes the work
of receiving and looking after the stores in the big house was done by a
special cellarer.