A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



Bailiffs and sub-bailiffs of the hundreds, escheators and coroners, with 

 their subordinates all exercised their different offices and all, from the highest 

 to the lowest, regarded them as sources of personal profit. Various inquisitions 

 were held during the thirteenth century to bring to light all such irregularities. 



In the hundreds of Bonestowe, Molesho, and Seggelawe, the sheriff had 

 gradually raised the ferm since 1265 from IOQJ. to jTS, and the hundreds of 

 Newport had suffered a similar increase. On another occasion the sheriff 

 received money due to the king, gave no receipt for it, and never 

 accounted for it in the royal exchequer. Again, he exacted a fine for beau- 

 pleader at Chicheley which was not due from the township. Whether the 

 sheriff personally or the king was the gainer in this case does not appear. 

 The coroners extorted money from the various townships when they came to 

 hold inquests, and Elias de Eugaine, a bailiff, imprisoned a man, Hugh son of 

 Hugh by name, without cause and held him in durance until payment of 

 105^. was made. 



Bribery was also rife amongst all officials. The same Elias de Eugaine, 

 when sheriff, accepted money to excuse men from serving on inquest ; the 

 coroners and bailiffs took bribes from different places to conceal crimes committed 

 within their boundaries, and to connive at the escape of prisoners from gaol. 



The escheators who came to take possession of the lands falling in to the 

 king, do not seem to have been the personal gainers by the irregularities 

 practised, but the heirs of the last tenants suffered in many ways from the 

 wrongful seizure of land. 



In the fourteenth century a special assize ls was held by the itinerant 

 justices of all ' Oppressions and Extortions.' The sheriffs and bailiffs were 

 still guilty of similar offences, but a prominent place was given to irregu- 

 larities in the collection of wool granted to the king. The collectors 

 were accused of refusing to give receipts for wool they had taken, or else of 

 weighing it falsely. 



To gain any picture of the social condition of the inhabitants of Buck- 

 inghamshire in the Middle Ages, recourse must be had not to the towns but 

 almost exclusively to manorial records, for the manor was the unit around 

 which the whole local life of the country revolved. 



The manors were for the most part in the hands of lay lords, for until 

 the twelfth century there were no religious houses in the county itself, though 

 a few manors were held by monasteries outside its boundaries. 14 Later the 

 foundations were numerous, but they were all small and included no house of 

 the first importance. In consequence, there are no great collections of docu- 

 ments concerning the lands and tenants of the monasteries, which elsewhere 

 contribute so largely to the materials for the social history of the twelfth and 

 the two succeeding centuries. An early extent of the manors of Missenden 

 Abbey for the fourteenth century exists, and similar documents for one or two 

 manors which were temporarily in the hands of the king, but it is from the 

 court rolls and ministers accounts of lay manors for the most part that all 

 information must be gathered. 16 



11 Assize R. No. 74. 



" The abbot of St. Albans claimed to hold Winslow and Horwood by a charter of King Offa ; Hund. R. 

 (Rec. Com.), i, 27. 



15 Few of the court rolls or accounts date back to the thirteenth century, but from the method of com- 

 piling the latter, it is possible to obtain information of an earlier date than the actual date of the document. 



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