Little is known about Hugo Malebisse or his son Hugh but the life of the Scaltun peasants under their descendants is likely to have been hard. According to William of Newburgh Richard the grandson of Hugh was rightly called mala-bestia. He was heavily indebted to Aaron of Lincoln in 1182 and his role as a ringleader of the massacre of the Jews of York in 1190 was said to have been motivated by his desire to rid himself of debts owed to Joseph a York Jewish moneylender. Soon after the partial forfeiture of his land because of his role in the massacre he was involved in John’s conspiracy against Richard I for which he was excommunicated in 1191 and paid a heavy fine of 300 marks in 1194. On the accession of King John he regained full possession of all his lands by payment of a fine of £100.
Less than a hundred years later in 1297 another Richard Malebisse had to answer to the king about a claim to the right supposedly given to his great grandfather Richard to have gallows in the Malebisse manors of Acaster, Thornton le Moor and Little Ayton and to try felons in all his manors and hang them if found guilty. It was recorded that he paraded such felons through the manors before taking them to the gallows even though one of the three manors was distant from the others by almost forty leagues [60 miles]. Malebissse also had control over the assizes of ale and bread and had tumbrils and pillories in his manors.
It can be seen that the Scaltun peasants of 12th and 13th century were under the complete feudal domination of this family as they were legally bound to the Lord of the manor. They had no property of their own, lived in very humble dwellings and had the right to certain arable strips, to graze a specific number of animals on common pasture and take a certain amount of hay from the meadow. The number of strips held by each man varied according to the wishes of the Lord ; freemen usually had more strips than villeins and cottars had no strips. The rights to strips passed from father to eldest son and younger sons usually inherited no land and became cottars.
The serfs usually paid modest money rents and often rents in kind, especially fowls an Christmas and eggs at Easter. They were bound to do work for the Lord — ‘week work’ a regular obligation to work the Lord’s land and ‘boon work’ which normally consisted of a few days ploughing, harrowing, threshing, haymaking and harvesting and perhaps some carting, fencing, ditching and cutting thatch. Their corn had to be ground at the Lord’s mill and their bread baked in his ovens and they had to obtain his permission to marry and pay a ‘merchet’ [fine] when their daughters married and one when they sold any of their animals. When they died their chattels became the property of the Lord but could be bought by heirs and a villein and his entire family could be sold by a Lord though this usually only happened when there was a change of Lordship.
The system had begun to change by the end of the 13th century and the Scawton record of the Lay Subsidies of 1300 shows a degree of wealth had been acquired by some members of the village community.
