VIII 



] Population. 105 



lation, which is indicated by the large number of 'vacant' messuages 

 recorded in Court Rolls and Survey, must date back to a period before 

 1422. The materials for the years from 1350 to 1422 are scanty; 

 but the Account Rolls of 1376-8 afford a basis for the belief that 

 already the number of dwellings was much less than it had formerly 

 been. For, in 1376-7, 232 acres of arable, formerly tenants' land, 

 were let to farm. Now nearly all of this land had been held by bond 

 tenure ; and since, at an earlier period, the average area of bond land 

 attached to a bond messuage was 7*5 acres, we should expect to find 

 31 messuages leased in connection with the 232 acres of bond land, 

 provided that no 'decay' of messuages had occurred. That such 

 decay had taken place is doubtless indicated by the fact that only 

 seven messuages were let. There were also let one vacant cottage 

 site, one curtilage, eight pightles, four crofts, and four closes. 



For the period before 1350 few Court Rolls remain, but the series 

 for the year 1332-3 is complete. Comparing the rolls of this year 

 w^ith those of the fifteenth century two facts are strikingly apparent ; 

 (i) the large number of persons' names and the large number of deaths 

 of tenants recorded in the earlier as compared with the later rolls. 

 Thus the rolls of 1332-3 contain 250 personal names, whereas the 

 rolls of 1460-61 (a complete series chosen at random for comparison) 

 contain only 126. In 1332-3 the deaths of twelve tenants are 

 recorded ; as large a number died in the year 1409-10, but, as a 

 rule, the number of deaths entered in the rolls of any one year of 

 the fifteenth century does not exceed three or four. It is of course 

 obvious that the two facts just cited, when taken by themselves, are 

 by no means to be considered as proofs of a greater population 

 before 1350 than in the fifteenth century. But they are evidence of 

 some slight confirmatory value. 



All the evidence that has been gathered from the records points 

 to the same conclusion, viz. that during the period 1 376-1 565 the 

 population of the manor was only about half as great as it had been 

 during the early part of the fourteenth century. 



The evidence regarding Forncett vill also points to a similar 

 decline in population. There were within the vill 1680 acres of arable 

 exclusive of the demesne. If, as seems to have been the case, there 

 was in the early fourteenth century one messuage to about eight acres 

 of arable, the number of messuages at that period must have been 

 about 210 or nearly twice the number standing within the vill in 

 1565. 



