C »89 ] 



tenure held In villenage* by the vafilils of the great 

 Lord, who for the moft part held under the Crown 

 by krtight's fees and war fcr vices. 



To 



w hilft others have a« confidently called It a hundred. Perhaps both of 

 tlicfc are right ; for if we look into DomeiUay-book, we Ihall find out 

 gentleman's manor gelt for twenty hides, which at prefent contain* 

 twenty hundred acres; and another gentleman's manor gelt at twenty 

 hides, that contains only ten hundred acres. The fa<fl is, a hide oF 

 land was juft fo much as could be tilled with one team, and fo was 

 more or lefs according to the induftry of the proprietor or proprietors; 

 for fometimes there were as many as fix valTals to one hide, each of 

 whom contributed his fingle ox, from whence the term ox-gang, or 

 ox-fhut, in certain inclofed pallures ; and hence it is too tliat we find 

 fuch a number of ancient tenements from ten to twenty acres each, 

 which was exadl one-fi>sth part of a hide of land. Great allowance 

 muft alfo be made in regard to the quantum contained in a hide, for 

 the lands which lay uncultivated at the Conqueft may at prefent be in 

 a high degree of culture; no wonder therefore that in tliis flat country 

 (a great part of which hath been new made fince the Conqueft) we 

 fometimes find the average hide of a manor to contain feveral hundred 

 acres. The price of a hide of land a little before the Conqueft was 

 fifty ihillings. 



• One branch of this fervice, as it was introduced before and at the 

 Conqueft, in a few particular places in England, g;ive the Lord a pii» 

 vilege of fleeping with his tenant's daughter the firft night after mar- 

 riage; but the good Queen Margaret, grandaughter of Edmund 

 Ironfide, and mother-in-law to our Henry I. in confequence of her 

 marriage with Malcolm king of Scotland, did, for a round fum of\no- 

 ney, compound M-ith the great Lords of that kingdom to abolilh a pre- 

 poftcrous cuftom big with evil againft nature and civil liberty ; and 

 King Henry fo far folbwed his mother-in-law's example, as to dif- 

 countenance it in England, by wholly freeing fuch of his fubjeAs who 

 laboured under this heavy yoke, upon tlieir paying 6s. 8d. which was 

 indeed fuch a pitiful price for a woman's virginity, that the cuftom 



very 



