DURING THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 127 



prescription was pleadable against a liability. I have seen 

 debts annually entered for a century on successive accounts. 

 When the outstanding accounts were added to the sums which 

 were apparently in dispute, one not recovered since the time 

 of the collector's predecessor, and the other a rent in dispute, 

 they exactly amount to the arrears 54 i/j. $d. with which 

 the collector is debited at the foot of the roll. Of this 

 sum 13 ijs. ^\d. is the arrear in the collector's hand, a 

 large sum when one reflects that he paid only .3 5^. to the 

 College. 



Tenements the annual value of which is 1$ ly. 3^. 

 are returned as void, for this is the meaning of defectus 

 redditus l . 



But the most noteworthy fact in the account, that indeed 

 for which I have printed it, is that, as will be seen, the ground 

 landlord does all the repairs. The charges incurred under 

 this head are not very considerable in the year which I have 

 selected, though they are more than double the net rent paid 

 by the collector. The bucket for the well, and even the rope 

 for the bucket, are a landlord's charge. In one of these Oxford 

 accounts, the College even buys and sets up a signboard for 

 its tenant. The pavement in front of the house is paid for 

 by the landlord, and the hinges and latches, locks and keys 

 to doors are similar and recurrent liabilities. 



I have also given three farmers' and collectors' accounts 

 for Alton Barnes, an estate which the College continued to 

 cultivate for more than the first thirty years of the fourteenth 

 century. After they abandoned this practice, they let the land 

 and the manorial rights, with the stock on the estate, the 

 amount of the stock, corn, cattle, and dead stock being entered 

 from time to time on the back of the roll, and generally 

 valued. In the case which I have given, it is frequently stated 

 that at the expiration of the lease, it varied in length from 

 five to ten years, the tenant should restore it, or purchase it, 



t 1 According to Gascoigne, who was living and writing at the date of this roll, the 

 imber of students in the University had serimsly decl'ncd about this time. 



