A HISTORY OF DORSET 



were keepers of the royal larder, William de Welles was the king's baker, and 

 the Windsors of Broadwinsor were weighers of money in the Exchequer 

 of Receipt at Windsor,* while Bryanston was held by the serjeanty of 

 finding one man with a bow without a bowstring, and an arrow without 

 feathers, for the king's army.' 



Below the ranks of the tenants in chief there seems to be no sufficient 

 evidence upon which to base any calculation as to the relative strength of the 

 free and villein classes. In 1244, indeed, it was said that all the tenants of 

 Mayne Hospital were freemen,* but in most places the villeins would appear 

 to have been in the majority in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 

 Thus on the manor of Coombe Keynes there were no free tenants, while there 

 were at least seven villeins and seven cottars, and probably others not 

 mentioned in detail.' Again at Stottingway and Way Bayeux in 1288 there 

 were only five free tenants as compared with thirteen customary tenants and 

 three cottars, and at Ranston (in Iwerne Courtney) in 1274 there were five 

 freemen and ten villeins,^" while at Steeple in 13 14 the customary tenants and 

 cottars together numbered forty-four, only two freemen being mentioned." 

 Later in the reign of Edward II there were at Hillfield four freemen and 

 nineteen customary tenants of various ranks, and at Milton Abbas nineteen 

 freemen and as many as 156 villeins and cottars." Apart, however, from 

 the fact that this evidence has been collected at haphazard from different 

 parts of the county its ultimate value is small ; for even were it possible to 

 give an exhaustive list of the extents for every manor throughout the county, 

 the fact that in many cases there is no mention of freemen ^' would still 

 remain a stumbling block. It is, of course, quite possible that in these 

 cases the whole of the manor was occupied by unfree tenants, the more 

 so as had there been freemen it would have been natural to find at 

 least some mention of their rents, but from the point of view of the lord 

 of the manor the villein, with his customary works and his rightless con- 

 dition, was so much more important and valuable a factor in the manorial 

 economy that it would be dangerous to draw too rigid an inference from the 

 omission. 



However this may be, it cannot be doubted that the villein population of 

 the county was considerable, and a certain amount of information can be 

 gathered as to its condition during the thirteenth and early fourteenth 

 centuries. That the Dorset magnates occasionally availed themselves of 

 their utmost rights with regard to their unfree tenants is clear. Nothing 

 could be more illustrative of this fact than three records, unfortunately undated, 

 in a Shaftesbury Abbey register, in which the abbess in full court quitclaims 

 A.B. ' a nativitate cum omne sequela magistro C.D.'^* The form of these 

 deeds of sale shows the mediaeval conception of villein status in its most 

 crude form. Not only is the degrading term ' sequela ' applied to the man's 

 children, but he himself seems to be barely credited with an individual 



' Asiiz- R. 201, m. 2, 2 </. ; Red Bk. of Exch. (Rolls Ser.), 546-7 ; Feud. Aids, ii, 9. 

 ' Feud. Aids, ii, 1. ' Assize R. 201, m. \d. 



• Chin. Inq. p.m. Ecw. I, file 14, No. I. '° Ibid, file 51, No. 9 ; file 8, No. I. 



" Ibid. 8 Edw. II, file 43, No. 25. A simi'ar preponderance of customary tenants is noticeable 

 at Cranborne, Pimperne, and Tarrant Gunville. But contrast Po tland and Wyke ; ibid. No. z6. 

 " Hi.tchins, Hist, of Dorset (3rd ed.), iv, 383, 501, quoting Milton Abbey Custumal. 

 " e.g. Chan. Inq. p.m. Edw. I, file 51, No. 9 ; Little Piddle and Edmondsham. 

 " Harl. MS. 61, fol. 89^. 



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