(^218) HANDEL
took shape gradually, by expanding the lord's holding at the expense of those of
the peasants, by land purchase, by agreement, or by the absorption of marginal
waste, forest, or unused plots. As it depended on peasant labour, it had nothing
to gain from evictions; but it transformed the ancient strip-holdings into large
demesne fields, leaving a separate, smaller area for the peasants' individual
plots. By 1560-70, its average size in the Kingdom of Poland exclusive of Prussia
has been calculated at 3.6 lan, that is, 60 hectares or 148 acres. Although some
examples on the great ecclesiastical estates may have reached 20 lan (823 acres),
encompassing a dozen settlements or more, others occupied as little as 1 lan (41
acres). Its typical lay-out - with the peasant cottages hugging the fringes of the
great house and the enclosed farm buildings - remained unchanged until the
nineteenth century. Only then, with the ending of serfdom and labour services,
did enclosures and evictions change the pattern once again. Even so, at no time
did the folwark system monopolize agrarian land. In the Lustracja of 1564-6
affecting 1,940 royal villages in the Kingdom, only 591, or less than one-third,
were run as folwarks. In the review of the Lubomirski latifundium of 1739, there
were 213 folwarks among 940 villages. Among the lesser nobility, the typical
pattern was to run the home farm as a folwark, whilst keeping one or two vil-
lages under the age-old strip system of the peasant tenants.
The labour-force of the Folwark consisted of two distinct categories, the serf-
tenants and the specialist personnel. The serfs, usually 15 to 20 families, held
private plots to support themselves and in return provided unpaid labour on the
demesne land. In medieval times, labour services had not been very exacting,
and took the form either oijutrzyny, meaning the cultivation of a specified addi-
tional plot in the peasant's own time, or else the rather casual robocizna, where
the peasant had to work 4, 6, 12, or 20 days in the year, or 'whenever asked', at
harvest or threshing. In the sixteenth century, however, the principle of the
panszczyzna tygodniowa, or 'weekly service', became general. In the first half of
the century, 1 or 2 days' labour from sunrise to sunset was demanded every week
in return for every tan of peasant land. In the second half, this was rising to 3
and 4 days per week. In the eighteenth century, 6, 7, or even 8 days were
demanded. In practical terms, the husband of the peasant family and possibly
one or more of his sons spent most of their time working for the lord, whilst his
wife and younger children were left to cultivate the family plot and to beat off
starvation.^19
The specialist personnel of the Folwark, numbering 7 or 8 people, enjoyed
less burdensome conditions. In the larger villages, there was the soltys (in
German, Schultheiss), an official who seems to have been more the agent of
seigneurial jurisdiction, than, as was once supposed, the head of a communal
system of peasant self-government. At all events, he enjoyed possession of a
large holding freed from labour dues, plus one-sixth of the rents, and one-third
of the revenue of the village court. A wlodarz acted as foreman of the serfs. He
also enjoyed land free of service. In the role of management when the lord was
not in personal charge, there would be a salaried dwornik (bailiff) and, for the
c. jardin
(C. Jardin)
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