OLD ABBEY -LANDS. 359 



ment, and the whole lives of two successors may be 

 employed in impoverishing it again without reducing it 

 to the low condition from which it had originally been 

 raised. 



We have in England many remarkable instances of 

 this latter fact j. which, in the neighbourhood in which they 

 occur, are often considered inexplicable. Near the ruins 

 of old abbeys and monasteries, for example, which have 

 been long demolished, a few fields are often observed 

 which exceed in fertility all the adjoining land, and, 

 though treated no better than the rest, have ever within 

 the memory of man given better crops. Facts of this 

 kind are to be explained by a reference to the customs 

 of the time when the ecclesiastical buildings still flou- 

 rished. It was the habit of the officials of the church or 

 monastery to collect, as a due, all the manure made by 

 the cattle and sheep of the cottars or tenants who held 

 under it, and to apply it to the home farm, which was 

 cultivated for the immediate use of the church. The 

 holders of land, byway of rent, for every four acres they 

 held, were in some instances bound to plough one acre 

 for the church ; and to this, and to the grass land kept in 

 their own hands, the servants of the church applied the 

 manure which they took from the tenantry.* It cannot, 



* Illustrations are to be found in the following extracts from the 

 Chronicles of Jocelyn of Brahelond, pp. 29 and 30 : — 



" And it was done accordingly, and confirmed by our charter, that 

 there be given to them another quittance from a certain customary pay- 

 ment, which is called sorpeni* for four shillings, payable at the same 

 term. The cellarer was also used to receive one penny, by the year, 

 for every cow belonging to the men of the town for their dung, (unless, 

 perchance, they happened to be the cows of the chaplains or the ser- 

 vants at the court lodge ;) and these cows he was used to impound, and 

 occupied himself much in such matters. ..... 



" The cellarer was to have the ploughings and the other services — to 



* Sorpeni. This -word is the same as scharpennj' or scharnpenny — that is, dung-pennj', 

 from schearn, dung. By this it seems the tenants were bound, as being originally bond- 

 men, to pen up their cattle at night in the pound or yard of their lord, for the benefit of 

 their dung ; and if they did not do so, they paid this dung-penny as a compensation. 



