Bji John Watson-Taylor. 95) 



tenants' strips on the hill as given in the many schedules of the 

 court book. The total area of the two private pastures— the only 

 unofficial figures— is, it is interesting to find, only four acres less 

 than that for which John de Weston, as he states in his account, 

 liad no bid while the manor was in his charge, and a further 

 coincidence is found in the fact that the total area of the lord's 

 share in the schedule is exactly one half of the area of the manor 

 as given in the terrier of 1847. On the tenants' side the areas are 

 balances from the terrier totals in each section, excepting in the 

 case of the Marsh, where the difficulty of differentiating between 

 arable and common has been solved by making the acreage of the 

 Common, when added to that of the Sheep Leaze on the hill-side, 

 correspond with the total of two hundred acres, cited in the case 

 of John de Cheverell versus Matthew Fitz-John as the appurtenance 

 in common of pasture belonging to the land of John Bever, and 

 by adding the balance to the Lowfields. When the area of common 

 has been deducted from the tenants' total share there remain eight 

 hundred and ten acres to be divided among them, of which the 

 customary tenants had six hundred acres, more or less, according to 

 the actual size of each man's virgate or half-virgate, and thus there 

 are only two hundred and ten acres available for the free-tenants, 

 or an average of twenty-one acres each. This area, though it 

 appears small, is greater than that which Geoffrey de Auberville 

 held, and is only a little smaller than the virgate which John 

 de Cheverell bought, and corresponds with the rent they paid, 

 if that was on the same scale as the rent of the customary 

 tenants. In these calculations it has been presumed that the 

 virgate of the Dean and Chapter of Sarum and the half- 

 virgate attached to the manor mill were not actually extra- 

 territorial, and they have been included in the schedule. In the 

 inquisition it is shown that one of the free-tenants held part of 

 his land by the payment of ^Ib. of cummin, and this may have been 

 the priest whose predecessor in 1281 was a tenant of the manor. 



In bringing this chapter to a close it may be of interest to 

 compare the report of the inquisition held at Erlestoke in 1309 

 with those of other manors held in the same county at about the 



H 2 



