By John Watson- Taylor. 81 



The head-money of certain persons {de chevagio qioommdavi) 

 was probably a payment made by the cottiers similar in 

 nature to the tallage of the villeins, and at a later date replaced 

 by certain small services, not here referred to, which they owed 

 besides their rent. It was from this class that the bailiff' obtained 

 the servants whose rent he paid wliile they were in his employ. 

 Tlie rent of hens entered in the accounts of the second year as 

 paid at Christmas was a payment that in most manors was made 

 by the villeins at the feast of St. Martin, and seems to be represented 

 in 1309 by a gift made to the lord by these tenants and the cottiers 

 for churchsete — " the customary oblations to the parish priest," 

 which the lord had evidently redeemed for himself and his tenants, 

 as was frequently the custom. The total cost of twelve oxen 

 and two horses seems low when compared with the sum of ten 

 pounds allowed to Herbert Fitz-Matthew sixty years earlier for 

 the purchase of one horse, but it is probable that all the live and 

 dead stock was taken over from Matthew Fitz-John at a valuation 

 and re-sold to him at the end of the term at a slight reduction for 

 depreciation. In the absence of authoritative guidance as to the 

 relative values of money at different periods it is difficult to 

 appreciate the meaning of the prices given in the accounts, but if, 

 as is sometimes stated, the modern value of money is from twelve 

 to fifteen times that obtaining in the thirteenth century, then the 

 sum received by sale of the standing crops {de o)nnihus hladis in 

 terra venditis in grosso) seems very large. At the same time this 

 was no doubt the result of a bargain based on the high prices 

 ruling in consequence of a disastrous storm which had ruined the 

 crops in 1286 and had sent the price of wheat up to 16s. the 

 quarter.^ The revenue from the dovecot also appears large, seeing 

 that pigeons sold at this time for about one-farthing each, but the 

 lord of the manor bad the exclusive right to keep pigeons, which 

 thus had the whole manor as their feeding ground. The revenue 

 of the mill, on the other hand, was small, but in this connection it 



' Fleetwood, Chronicon Preciosum, ed. 1745, p. 63. 



VOL. XXXIV. — NO. cm. G 



