6 4 



on their tenants, from tolls of fairs, markets, and ferries, 

 and from many other small sources of income, issuing, for the 

 most part, from manorial rights. How trivial these items 

 were, individually, may be seen from the bailiff's account 

 printed at the end of the second volume, and from the two 

 rentals of Cuxham and Ibstone. But they amounted in the 

 aggregate to a considerable sum, when the lord was master 

 of many manors. Mr. Hallam, indeed, has expressed an 

 opinion that the spirit of chivalry, cultivated by the habits 

 of the English feudal nobility, would have disdained such 

 pitiful sources of income as are recounted in these bailiff 

 and court rolls; and he infers that the gradual emancipation 

 of the villains was due to the scorn which these lords would 

 have felt at appropriating the poor accumulations of the 

 lower classes. But there is certainly no warranty for such 

 a view. A very cursory examination into such accounts 

 as have contributed the material for these pages is con- 

 clusive to the contrary, and shews that no source of income, 

 however small, was neglected or unappropriated by the feudal 

 superior. 



The feudal lord was liable, in his turn, or rather in the 

 person of his infant heir, to contingencies more oppressive 

 and ruinous than those which befel the inferior and, legally 

 speaking, precarious tenant. A period of nonage had very 

 different effects on the estate of the possessor from those 

 which now attend legal infancy. It is true that provision 

 was made for such education and training as was suitable 

 to the social position of the heir, but the profits of his 

 estates were appropriated, and waste, especially in cutting 

 his timber, was freely practised. Wood was of high relative 

 value in the middle ages, just as it now is in Germany. 



The resources of the feudal baron, seldom, except he were 

 a churchman, adequate to his necessities, were expended in 

 some foreign luxuries, in ostentatious attendance, in mili- 

 tary display, and occasionally in public charity. We are 

 amazed at the severity of the forest laws, and the stringency 



