A HISTORY OF DORSET 



There was, however, another side to the question — a plea of villeinage 

 might occasionally prove a convenient escape from an awkward suit, and it 

 was perhaps as well that a man who had once acknowledged himself to be 

 a villein before the justices could not subsequently repudiate the confession. 

 The policy of a certain Hamlin son of Ralph well illustrates this point. 

 In or before the year 1220 he won his case in an assize of novel disseisin 

 against Hugh de Gundeville, who had apparently ejected him from his 

 tenement. Hugh thereupon brought a counter-plea that Hamlin had no 

 power to sue him, as being his villein. He stated that in the reign of 

 King John, before the justices in eyre, Hamlin had confessed himself to be 

 a villein and to hold in villeinage. This assertion Hamlin denied, but when 

 the records of the eyre were examined it was found that one Osbert Crede 

 had brought an assize of mort (f ancestor against him, touching a carucate 

 of land in Pimperne [Pimpre], and that he had refused to answer on the plea 

 that he was a villein, and as such could neither acquire nor lose land. 

 Hamlin, apparently finding that the suit was likely to go against him, 

 absented himself, and after several vain attempts had been made to find 

 him, it was decreed that Hugh should have him sicut inllanum suum con- 

 victum, that the assize of novel disseisin which he had instituted should be 

 quashed, and that Hugh should be quit of the fine which had been 

 imposed upon him on the finding of the first assize.^* 



Hamlin's case further illustrates the fact that it was no impossible 

 thing for a Dorset villein to be quite a substantial landowner ; whether 

 Hamlin himself was really a villein, or had only used the plea in the first 

 instance as a subterfuge, neither the justices nor the jurors seem to have 

 found any difficulty in the fact that he held as much as a carucate of land. 

 Further evidence in the same direction can be obtained from the Shaftesbury 

 Register where, in a survey of Cheselbourne, presumably of the reign of 

 Edward I, or at least early in the fourteenth century, one of the villeins 

 held an entire hide, and four others held half a hide each.^' There was a 

 marked tendency in the county to indulge in minute classifications of the 

 villein population, however ; at Kingston Lacy they were known as carters, 

 daywyns, forehors, akermen, and smalemen respectively. It seems clear that 

 the carter held normally one virgate of land, and the daywyn, owing very 

 similar services, may be supposed to have held nearly as much ; the forehors 

 and akermen appear to be classed together, but there is no definite statement 

 as to the size of any of their holdings.'" Elsewhere the distinctions are 

 somewhat different ; thus at Spettisbury in 1324—5 there were sixteen virga- 

 tarii, three holders of half a virgate, four fardelli holding 8 acres each, and 

 eleven cottars." At Sydling St. Nicholas and Hillfield the classification was 

 similar,^' but at Hinton (St. Mary) a distinction was made between cotsetti 



'* Maitland, Bracton's Note Bk. Case 1 4 1 1 . 



" Harl. MS. 61, fol. 44 'j'. It is most unfortunate that these surveys are only preserved in a poor 

 fifteenth-century transcript, with no reliable indication of their date. From the fact that thev reler frequently 

 to King Henrv as the predecessor of the present king, and show evident signs of unsuccessful administration, 

 it is tempting to refer them to the close of the thirteenth or early years of the fourteenth rentur\-. Cf. 

 ' Religious Houses.' Cf. also the 2 virgate holdings at Broadwinsor in Chan. Inq. p.m. Edw. I, file 34, 

 No. 3. 



*" Mins. Accts. (Duchy of Lane), 11040 and 11 192, and ibid. (Gen. Ser.), bdle. 832, No. 13. 



•' Hutchins, Hist, of Dorset, iii, 517, quoting a survey. 



" Ibid, iv, 497, 501, quoting Milton Abbey Custumal. 



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