For the early 11th century to the middle of the 12th several generations of the peasant families of Begesland would have lived under the feudal lordships of Aschil, William and Robert Malet and Nigel d’Aubigny and his son Roger de Mowbray and it is assumed that mostpeasants were unfree villanes, in servitude to their lords and generally living a life that consisted mainly of hard work, drudgery and poor living conditions which caused infant mortality to be very high and many adults to die before they reached middle age.
Villanes faced such burdens as the payment of their best horse, ox or cow as ‘heriot’ [death duty], a payment known as ‘merchet’ for permission to give their daughter in marriage and ‘tallage’ which was a payment levied by the Lord of the Manor either annually or at longer intervals. They also had the burden of performing service on demesne lands several days a week without knowing beforehand what that work was going to be.
Peasants’ fortunes were determined by the amount of land they held which varied from a ‘virgate’ of approximately 30 acres to plots half that size and some as little as 5 acres. A full peasant holding would consist of a homestead in the village, portions of arable land in each of the fields plus meadow and grazing rights. The land would consist of strips in different parts of the manor with each peasant having a fair share of good and poor arable land which was worked on the open field system of two or three fields, one of which would be fallow at specific times with animals allowed on the fallow land so that their dung would aid fertility.
In 1134 twelve Savignian monks led by Abbot Gerold left Furness Abbey to found a daughter house at Calder where they lived for four years until it was destroyed by King David of Scotland. Refused entry at Furness they journeyed across country and arrived in Thirsk where they were befriended by Gundreda d’Aubigny the widow of Nigel and mother of Roger de Mowbray.
She originally sent them to her uncle Roberto de Alneto with whom they lived at Hood near Whitestonecliffe until 1142 when de Mowbray, influenced by his mother granted them the land at Begesland where they first intended to build their abbey on a site near the present-day Tylas Farm from where they moved people and settled them with others living near a spring called Stutekelde which is just south of the present-day Old Byland Hall..
The monks’ stay was a short one as they left in 1147 and moved first to Kilburn and finally to Byland by Wass where they built their abbey. One possible reason for the move was the clashing of their service bells with those of nearby Rievaulx Abbey and another was the merging of the Cistercian and Savignian orders in the same year which could have caused Abbot Roger to move to pastures new.
Whatever the reasons for the move Begesland or Byland on the Moor remained a Grange of Byland Abbey for nearly four hundred years and its land stretched as far as the river Rye which originally ran through the centre of the valley until the Abbot of Byland and Hugo Malebisse the Lord of the manor of Scawton gave the Rievaulx Abbot
