Introduction. xi 



dozen may be found, and in Rogers' " Agriculture and Prices " 

 there are several. 



2. Court Rolls begin to appear at about the same time as 

 manorial accounts, that is, before the middle of the thirteenth 

 century. To students of economic history this class of documents 

 is of prime importance, for it throws light on the relations of the 

 peasantry to their lords and to the land. Very few court rolls 

 have as yet been printed- 



In the volume edited by Professor F, W. Maitland for the 

 Seldon Society (1889), however, most valuable early material of 

 this kind may be found. 



3. Printed Extents of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries 

 are comparatively abundant. A document commonly assigned to 

 4 Ed. III. (1276) prescribes the subjects and order of inquiry. 

 Buildings; acreage and value of demesne, meadow, pasture, and 

 foreign pasture, parks and demesne woods and foreign woods ; 

 pannage and herbage ; mills and fisheries ; freeholders and their 

 lands; customary tenants, their holdings, works, customs, and 

 fixed rents ; cottagers, and their curtilages ; perquisites of courts ; 

 patronage of churches ; heriots ; fairs; markets; customs, services, 

 and foreign works and customs ; fines and reliefs, — are all matters 

 that come within the scope of the manorial extent. Extents 

 were usually drawn up by " ancient and sage tenants," " true and 

 sworn men." Walter of Henley, writing in the thirteenth century, 

 advises landlords to have extents made yearly, and yearly views 

 of account taken. This, he says, is necessary to protect them 

 from dishonest bailiffs on the one hand, and from tenants who will 

 wish to " deny services " on the other. Religious houses seem to 

 have been particularly careful in the management of their estates 

 and in preserving their manorial records. One of the regulations 

 of the Monastery of Gloucester required bailiffs to write their 

 accounts on rolls of parchment and to put the proper titles to the 

 documents.' The typical extent, then, describes the lands as 

 well as the tenants of the manor; but there are other documents 

 of the thirteenth century and later that deal with the tenants alone. 

 They give the names of the tenants, the holdings of each, the 



' Gloucester Cartulary, iii. 216. 



