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of each manor.

method of farming with hired labour could not be made to pay. Large or absentee landowners retired from business, let their demesne lands on lease at yearly rents to tenant farmers, and, no longer needing labour services, accepted the cash equivalents from their copyholders, supplemented by payment of the quit-rents, heriots, and fines on transfer which were sanctioned by the customs registered in the Court Rolls. Naturally these changes advanced at a pace which varied with the conditions At East Hendred, in Berkshire, the rate of progress was more leisurely than at Banstead, in Surrey. But the advance was made. In a Court Roll of the Manor of Arches belonging to the Eyston family, is the entry for 1410, that the lord granted his tenants permission to compound for manual labour at the rate of fourpence a man for the day. The relaxation of the old tenures meant an advance towards personal freedom. It meant that money payments had become more valuable to the lord than the number or the muscles of his It meant also that the barriers against competition and individualism were crumbling. The strongest and most enterprising begin to lay field to field; the weakest go to the wall and lose their grip on the land. At Saleby the manorial accounts at the end of the 15th century show that, while, in the aggregate, the fixed money rents remained practically the same as in 1291, they were paid by half the number of tenants. The size of the holding was larger; the number of holders was smaller. It was not only the lease-holding farmers who were increasing; the landless class of wageearners, often itinerant, was multiplying.

men.

So long as the manorial system flourished, the Courts were the centres of its efficiency. In practice the differences between the Court Baron, the customary Court, and the View, at which the tithing-men reported defaults and offences committed within their tithings, were not very strictly observed. In the days of their zenith they were entrusted with wide powers. At East Hendred, the Manor of the Carthusian Priory of Sheen, by express grant from Henry V, possessed criminal jurisdiction, including the privilege of a pillory, a tumbral,* and a

The tumbral, otherwise called a trebuchet, a thewe or a cucking-stool, was a chair in which offenders, mostly women, were fastened. At Lynch

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gallows for malefactors. Even when no direct authority was conferred, considerable powers were exercised by Manor Courts in criminal and civil cases of minor importance, such as assault, debt, trespass or slander. But the main business arose out of manorial rights and the conditions of the occupation and cultivation of the land. Through the Courts a lord of the manor maintained his hold on bondmen. Here their flights were reported, steps ordered for their recovery, or licences paid for their residence outside the manor. On the other hand, the Courts helped the bondman in his passage to greater freedom. Its records of rents and services first defined his precarious obligations, and then raised him from a customary tenant to a copyholder by copy of the Court Roll. Here were entered the terms of customary tenancies, their surrender, the admission of new tenants, the payments of fines on entry. In 1804 it is by the 'Ancient Court Roll' of the House of John (sic) of Bethlem of Shine'-two and a half centuries after the Dissolution of the Priory-that the tenants of the King's Manor at East Hendred established their title to copyholds of inheritance on a fine of one year's rent. On the same evidence they also admitted their liability to a heriot of the best animal (or the best goods) belonging to a deceased tenant. Animals were valued by the members of the Court. At East Hendred in 1409 the right to a heriot is in transition from the delivery of the animal itself to the payment of its value. The Court Roll of the Manor of Arches records a heriot of a black horse, due from the estate of a deceased tenant. The animal was valued by the Court at 8s. At this price it was bought back by the heir; but, as he could not at once find the money, he was allowed to take the horse, depositing as security for the payment a brass dish of the value of 16s.

Other cases before the Courts arose out of obligations of the customary tenants, such as that of keeping their tenements in repair. The flimsy construction of these wattle and daub structures is illustrated by the frequent reports of their ruinous condition, and by the mere, in Sussex, the Augustinian Priory had the right of 'thurset,' i.e. of sentencing to the thewe. The punishment was used for various offences, ranging from adultery to the sale of rotten fish.

short time allowed to remedy the defects. In the earliest Court Roll at East Hendred (1388) no less than seven tenements are reported to be in a ruinous state. Most numerous of all are the cases in which the tenants enforce against one another, or against strangers, their regulations for the occupation and cultivation of land. Tenants are reported for neglect to repair their portion of the roads and bridges, or the fences and stiles, for which they are individually liable; for default in scouring dykes and water-courses; for turning out more stock than they were entitled to have on the common pastures; for trespassing with their cattle or sheep on growing crops; or for encroaching on their neighbours' strips. The Latin of the Court Roll at East Hendred, in which this last offence is recorded, is not classical-"John Hutchins incroachiavit aratro suo'; but the meaning is clear, and the curse in the Commination Service on the man who moved his neighbour's landmark had a real meaning for mediæval farmers.

In East Hendred there were no less than five manors, three of which were formed out of estates mentioned in the Domesday Survey-one belonging to the Crown in right of Edward the Confessor, one to the Count of Evreux, the other to Henry de Ferrers. The royal manor was given by the Empress Matilda to the Abbey of Reading, and was therefore known as the Abbey Manor. At the Dissolution, it was regranted by Henry VIII, and eventually (1623) was bought by the Eystons. The second manor was granted by Simon Count of Evreux in 1450–57 to the Priory of Noyon-surAndelle. When, in 1414, the Priory was suppressed as an alien house, the manor was given by Henry V to the Carthusian Priory at Sheen near Richmond. The Priory was highly favoured by the King. To it he granted not only the criminal jurisdiction already noticed, but the privilege of holding a weekly market and a fair twice a year. The Carthusians were not ungrateful. In the village street still stands the disused Chapel of Jesus of Bethlehem, and the house attached to it, which they built shortly after coming into possession. At the Dissolution the manor passed to the Crown and became known as the King's Manor. Till its sale in 1823, its Stewardship, like that of the Chiltern Hundreds, was

used as an office of profit to vacate a seat in Parliament. The third manor, that of Arches, represents the lands of Henry de Ferrers. It is the only one of the five manors which has always been in lay hands. Through the families of Turberville, Stowe, and Arches, it descended by inheritance (1443) to the Eystons, to whom it has ever since belonged.

The fourth manor, that of Framptons, after belonging to the Benedictine Priory of Frampton in Dorsetshire, was probably regranted by Henry V to some other religious body. After the Dissolution it passed through various hands to Sir John Pollen, who inherited considerable property in the parish from the family of Sherwood. The fifth manor, popularly known as New College Manor, belonged to the Benedictine Priory for Nuns at Littlemore in Oxfordshire, and after the Dissolution, to Lord Williams of Thame. He left it (1559) with other property, to endow the Almshouse and free Grammar School which he founded at Thame. As trustees of the benefaction, it was vested in the Warden and Scholars of New College, from whom its name is derived.

Eight centuries of history are spanned, and Domesday Book is linked to the Ordnance Survey, by the local names which preserve the memory of four out of the five manors. Their existence in the same area, in theory, complicates the management of the commonable lands. The sense of the community probably suggested a practical solution. Thus a Court Roll of the Manor of Arches in 1674 records an arrangement by which the tenants met those of the King's Manor for the purpose of setting out 'meare-stones.' Whether the multitude of manors conduced to early freedom it is impossible to say. The number of copyholders is large. On the King's Manor in 1650 there were twenty-one copyholders to one tenant in free socage. A somewhat similar proportion existed on the lay Manor of Arches. The form of tenure was also secure. Except by their own act, copyholders of inheritance, with fixed fines, held the land almost as firmly as freeholders. Both classes are equally described as yeomen.

By the middle of the 16th century, serfdom and labour services had practically disappeared. Yet, so long as village farms survived, the relations of the occupiers to one another remained the same as at the

Conquest. More and more of the intermixed strips of arable land might, through exchange or purchase, be consolidated in the hands of individuals. But, where the framework was intact, a large proportion of the population remained partners in the common enterprise, and most of the arable land was still cultivated in open fields.

were

East Hendred, like other Down villages, was little affected by the extensive conversion of arable land to pasture, which, in the 16th century, broke up so many open-field farms. Neither of the principal causes which elsewhere promoted the enclosing movement urgent among the Berkshire Downs. In some districts, centuries of incessant cropping, combined with shortage of manure, had so impoverished the soil that it could only recover under grass. But Down farmers to some extent escaped this danger; chalk provided them with a natural means of maintaining and restoring fertility. In many districts, also, pasture was so scarce that, without laying plough-land to grass farmers could not increase their sheep or profit by the prosperity of the wool trade. Here, too, Down villages had the advantage. Their pastures were abundant enough to remove the temptation to abandon corn. They were thus comparatively untouched by the first wave of enclosure which rose in other districts to the height of revolution.

Already notable among Berkshire villages for its flocks of sheep, East Hendred remained a corn-growing open-field village. For one brief period, 1450-1560, it turned from agriculture to trade. All round it the clothier industry was thriving. East Hendred, with its weekly market, its two fairs, and its home-produced wool, might well hope to share in the prosperity. It set up its fulling mill; it had its terraces for drying cloth; a brass in the parish church commemorates a clothier family; the research of Mr Humphreys has discovered three East Hendred litigants at the end of the 15th century, who are described respectively as a 'Kerseyman,' a 'Clothman,' and a 'Chapman.' But, except as a domestic handicraft, the industry never became established. Perhaps the water-power proved insufficient. With this brief interlude of commercial ambition, the village resumed its economic life on agricultural lines.

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