NOTES ON THE MANOR OF FORDINGTON. 159 



indeed in water meadow could not, have the " walls " of the arable 

 land. Each of the copyholders or their tenants made and carried 

 the hay of his own lawn or lawns. From the East Ward, 

 bye-the-bye, the waggons went through a deep ford. The after- 

 math grazing of the one or two freehold meadow lawns, equally 

 with those on copyhold tenure, was common to all copyholders. 

 But this aftermath in the East and West Wards was by no means 

 the only common pasture. Through the summer, from May 12th, 

 the copyholders, their tenants, or others renting only cows' grazing, 

 sent their cows into Fordington Moor, to which pasture a rest was 

 given by shifting the cows to Poundbury when thought needful. 

 The copyholders had these cow-grazing rights in proportion to their 

 holdings. A whole place carried right for three cows, for instance. 

 I need hardly say that this part of the system involved great 

 picturesqueness. Every sort of cow there was, from the old- 

 fashioned brindled up to good shorthorns. The herd amounted to 

 154, tended by a cowherd. He received Id. a week for each cow 

 if only one came from its owner, but l^d. for every two if so many 

 or more hailed from one homestead. I well recall J. King, cow- 

 herd through great part of my boyhood, asking my father if he 

 could not put in a word in favour of his getting the full Id. a head. 

 This, to his moderate thinking, " ood a med he a rich man." While 

 the cows were on Poundbury my remembrance is that John, and I 

 suppose other cowherds in their time, bivouacked there all night in 

 a shelter of strawed hurdles. " Mutato mutando " we may say of 

 that abode on Poundbury, as Pepys did of the shepherds on Salis- 

 bury Plain " the cowherd's life was, in fair weather only, pretty." 

 Little remains to tell except that the affairs of the Manor were 

 conducted as to local matters by the reeve above mentioned. And 

 a Manor Court was held by the steward of the Duchy of Cornwall 

 yearly in November at the Court House. This stood near Fording- 

 ton Green on the present site of a pair of houses called Victoria 

 Villas. At this court, down to the early years of this century, the 

 copyholders did homage for livings by presenting a silver spur. 

 No one will be surprised that the old Manor had a tendency 



