98 ON SOME ANCIENT BURTON MANUSCRIPTS. 
might be noticed, and that is the occurrence of a word which 
seems to have been coined for the occasion. I mean “ omnino- 
dum,” an adjective agreeing with jus and clameum. The same 
word occurs in another deed in the accusative plural. 
Having now put before you a specimen of each kind of con- 
veyance, I propose to endeavour to explain to you the meaning of 
an ancient conveyance such as we have seen to-night. Tha 
which strikes anyone, I think, more than anything on reading one 
of these conveyances for the first time is the clause reserving the 
rent, which generally runs thus :—‘‘ To hold of the chief lords of 
that fee by the services therefor due and of right accustomed.” 
That is very different to our modern notions of rent. ‘‘ Paying, 
therefor, the yearly rent of £50 (say) by equal quarterly pay- 
ments,” 
and so on. Now, that clause points to a time when 
society was constituted in a radically different way to modern 
society as we know it. I must ask you to carry your minds back 
581 years, to the year 1310. Now, that year is not quite 100 
years subsequent to the granting of Magna Charta by King John, 
about the same distance of time that separates us from the great 
French Revolution, and this space had been bridged over by the 
reigns of Henry the Third and Edward the First ; and a few more 
years were to see the Battle of Bannockburn. It is into that 
kind of atmosphere that we must try to carry ourselves for a few 
minutes. It was a time when, according to the well-known lines, 
people generally were guided by 
‘* The good old rule, the simple plan, 
That they shall take who have the power, 
And they shall keep who can.” 
All the Jand in this country was then, as it is now, vested in the 
Crown. William the First was lord paramount of every inch of 
the soil, and so were, and, indeed, so are, his successors; and the 
Crown was the representative of the nation. It was then the 
business of the Crown to take the best measures it knew of in 
order to keep and retain its ownership of the soil for its subjects. 
What did the Crown do then? It divided the land up amongst 
