History of Animal Plagues. loo 



tracted, and by the courtesy of the solicitors of Mr Le Stramre 

 the present lord, I am permitted to bring them before the 

 society. 



'The accounts taken were extremely minute and careful, 

 and the particulars of the live stock showed all the additions, 

 sales, and losses of ev^ery description during the year ending at 

 Michaelmas. To assist the auditors in testing the accounts of 

 the bailiff, the presentments of the losses by murrain appear 

 to have been made on oath at the Manor Courts; another 

 reason, probably, was to absolve the shepherds, who were bond 

 tenants of the manor, from liability on account of the losses 

 when not happening from want of proper care on their part. 



'The presentments on the Court Roll commence in the 2Tst 

 year of Edward III., 1347, and whatever may have been the 

 case in other parts, in this corner of the kingdom the murrain 

 seems to have continued more or less severely during the rest 

 of the reisrn of Edward III., durinir the entire rei^n of Richard 

 II., and until the 13th year of Henry IV., a period of 63 years. 



'The bailiffs' accounts for the whole of this period have not 

 been preserved ; a portion of them only remains ; and from this 

 I have gleaned a few particulars to assist in explaining the 

 entries on the rolls. 



' The stock account for the 33rd year of Edward III. shows 

 that at that time there were upon the farm 12 horses and stots (I 

 have treated the animals described ' stots ' as horses — not because 

 I believe them to be so in every case where the word is used, but 

 because the Stock Accounts of this Manor clearly desionate the 

 horses so),^ 53 head of cattle, and 7 calves, 733 sheep, and 140 

 lambs. 



^ The word ' slot ' is used in the Scotch lowlands to designate a bullock. I 

 never heard of the term being employed for horses in recent times. In Sir David 

 Lyndsay, however, as well as in Cliaucer, horses are so named ; and the designa- 

 tion is evidently derived from beyond the border. Chaxicer, in the fourteentii 

 century, the period of our Court Roll, when describing the steward's appearance 

 in the Canterbury Pilgrimage, testifies to this : 



' This Reevci sat upon a right good slot, 

 That was all pomelecgray (dappled gr.iy) and highte (liigli-l)red) Scot.' 



Stot is supposed by Richardson, in his Dictionary of tlie English Langu.age, to be 

 derived from the Anglo-Saxon 'slod-hors,' and is of course only applicaljle to 



