SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



decided that the manor was not ancient demesne, that the abbot 

 and his predecessors were seised of the tallage and merchet of the 

 tenants ; he was therefore to recover seisin, and the men to be fined 

 5 marks. 



In 1276 the tenants returned to the charge. Walter de Lestile, 

 Walter le Disine, Roger le Paternoster, and other men of Harmonds- 

 worth attacked the abbot on the same grounds as before. This time 

 the abbot refused to plead on the ground that the manor not being 

 ancient demesne the men were his villeins and could not sue him at law. 

 The court declared that a jury of the county could not decide whether 

 the manor were or were not ancient demesne, because rights of the 

 crown which went back beyond the memory of man could not be 

 determined by a reference to that memory. A reference to Domesday 

 was made by the lords of the Exchequer, who found that Harmonds- 

 worth was not amongst the manors of ancient demesne entered in 

 Domesday. The court therefore confirmed William of Raseley's verdict 

 that the men were tallageable at will and bound to redeem their flesh 

 and blood. 



In this decision the tenants were not by any means minded to 

 acquiesce. With ' presumptuous and inveterate fatuity ' they flatly re- 

 fused the disputed customs, ' saying they would rather die than render 

 them.' When the abbot distrained their teams, they took them back 

 by force vi et armis ; openly threatened no less than to burn down his 

 house, and committed ' various homicides and other enormities.' The 

 abbot was powerless and appealed to the king, ' lest by their insolence 

 and rebellion worse should befall his prior ' at Harmondsworth. In May, 

 1277, Edward II dispatched Geoffrey de Pyncheford, the constable of 

 Windsor, in propria persona^ to the aid of the prior ; and a year later the 

 sheriff of Middlesex was sent on the same errand. But the men of 

 Harmondsworth persisted in their ' pristine malice and rebellion,' so that 

 later in that year or in the next the king sent Robert Fulton and Roger 

 de Bechesworth with orders to call the tenants before them, and, if they 

 persisted in their disobedience, to assist the abbot in enforcing his rights 

 and to punish the men with a severity calculated to deter them from a 

 repetition of their wrong-doing. 



Apparently these drastic measures produced the desired effect, for 

 there seems to have been no further litigation until ten years later. In 

 1289 the abbot proceeded against twenty-five tenants for withholding 

 services and customs which they and their predecessors had rendered 

 until two years before. The services claimed are practically those of the 

 custumal ; ploughing, sowing, weeding, mowing, carting hay and corn, 

 attendance at bedrippes, and the obligation to tallage, merchet, and 

 ' grasenese.' The defendants recognized all the works except sowing 

 which they claimed (and the custumal states) should be done by the 

 abbot's servants the third or love-bedrippe and the obligation to bring 

 their cottars to help with the hay-carting. They also disputed their 

 responsibility for the adequate performance of the ploughing, their 

 2 81 ii 



