311 



Cfje Customs of J[our ^iiiiors of tlje 

 ^trfeg of ^ixmV 



By the Rev. W. G. Clark- Maxwell, F.S.A.. 



r"HE " customs " printed in the following pages are recorded 

 in the older cartulary preserved at Lacock Abbey. This 

 volume contains a large number of charters which are also to be 

 found " digested into a better order " in the more recent volume, 

 an abstract of the contents of which is to be found reprinted from 

 Stevens' Monasticon, as an appendix to Bowles and Nichols' Annals, 

 etc., of Lacock Abbey. Besides this, however, it has served for the 

 preservation of various memoranda, and on pp. 47 ff. are to be found 

 enumerated the rents, in money or labour, which were due from 

 the tenants on four of the abbey manors, Bishopstrow, Heddington, 

 Hatherop, and Lacock — all within the county of Wilts, except 

 Hatherop, which is in Gloucestershire. In two cases — Bishopstrow 

 and Heddington — we have a double return, noted as being "rfe 

 veteri rotulo," and " de novo," Init as the same names in many 

 instances occur in both rolls, they are probably not more than 

 fifteen or twenty years apart in point of date. The whole is 

 transcribed in a hand of the time of Edward I., and probably not 

 long after the compilation of the " new roll," while an hiteresting 

 indication of the date of the " old roll " is in all probability afforded 

 by the first entry under the heading of Bishopstrow, which states 

 that Aluredus de Nichol' or Lincoln holds one knight's fee in 

 " Sceles " (Zeals, in the ancient parish of Mere) by military service. 

 Reference to Mr. John Batten's " Notes on the Documentary History 

 of Zeals," Wilts Arch. Mag., xxviii., p. 204, shows us that in the reign 

 of Henry III. Alfred of Lincoln held one knight's fee in Zeals of 

 John Fitz-Geoffry, and he of the Earl of Salisbury, and he of the 



' Read at the Chippenham Meeting, 1902. 



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