By John Watson-Taylor. 91 



which the tenants shared with the lord under conditions that 

 changed every three years, so that the lord had it alternately for 

 two winters and a summer in one cycle and in the following cycle 

 for two summers and a winter, and when the common field called 

 Lower Lowfield was sown the tenants were allowed access to 

 Fernham through the lord's demesne lands, but in 1737 the tenants 

 exchanged this complicated custom for the right to have six gates 

 kept in repair. 



Of the cottiers not more can be said than that they paid rent 

 and small services for a cottage with a small garden or croft, 

 attached, and that they earned their living by working for the 

 lord and the free-tenants, and as it does not seem possible that 

 twenty-four families of this class would supply sufficient labour 

 for the whole manor, it is probable that there was another class 

 below them, gradually emerging from a condition of serfdom, that 

 was employed in menial work and occupied dwellings near the 

 chief messuage, or others belonging to the free-tenants. 



The courts baron which were held twice a year — at Easter and 

 Michaelmas — were attended by the free and customary tenants 

 who were collectively known as the homage, and presided over by 

 the steward, as representative of the lord, but occasionally by the 

 lord of the manor himself. In the scope of its business the court 

 was primarily an estate agency, for although the tenants were 

 feudally dependent on the lord, and their attendance at the court 

 was compulsory, yet the homage was a thoroughly democratic 

 body, and subject only in the conduct of its business to the single 

 law of custom. But besides the management of the manor the 

 court included in its scope most of those duties which by the 

 Local Government Act of 1894 were delegated to district and 

 parish councils, and was in this respect very like the latter of those 

 bodies, except that it was not elected and represented only a 

 portion — though a majority — of the inhabitants. The records of 

 the manor court book supply the minutes of these meetings, and 

 though they vary considerably in the amount of detail given, yet a 

 fairly comprehensive account of the proceedings can be drawn 

 from them when examined collectively. Thus it is evident that 



