SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



the sokemen of the ancient demesne. Those manors which were in the 

 hand of the king in Domesday Book were known as the ancient demesne of 

 the crown, and always preserved certain characteristics which never obtained 

 in later acquisitions of crown property. In Buckinghamshire there were 

 only six such manors, Aylesbury, Brill, Wendover, Swanbourne, Princes 

 Risborough, and Upton ; but amongst the tenants there, as in other counties, 

 a special class of privileged villeins arose. Their fines were fixed and also 

 their services, and, still more important, a special writ, the Little Writ of 

 Right Close, ran in the court of the Exchequer, by which they could sue in 

 the royal courts for their tenements. In the thirteenth century at Bierton,** 

 a manor appendant to Aylesbury, certain tenants were summoned to answer 

 an assize of novel disseisin before the itinerant justices, but they pleaded with 

 success that they could only be sued by their special writ, being tenants of 

 the ancient demesne. These rights were continued even after the manor was 

 granted away from the crown, since Aylesbury and Bierton were then held 

 by the descendants of Geoffrey FitzPeter. 47 



The references to the later history of the sokemen of the ancient demesne 

 are rare, but such tenancies can be traced. At Brill, in 1254,** there were 

 33 virgates of land held in chief of the king, each of which paid an annual 

 rent of 5^., and performed five days' specified customary work. This in all 

 probability was the sokemen's land, for the tenements and services of ordinary 

 villeins would not have been mentioned, and the exact similarity in the rent 

 and services due from each virgate would scarcely occur in freehold. 



At Aylesbury,*' in 1517, a Court Roll has been preserved in which the 

 suitors declare ' that all londes and tenements holdyn of the said manor within 

 the manor and lordshypp afor .... as well charter as copyhold to be 

 ympleted be writt of ryght clos after the custom. . . .' 



At Princes Risborough the fines paid in 1 323-4 M certainly suggest 

 that their amount was fixed ; twice over 31. was paid on entry to a tenement 

 and 6s. for maritagium, but no more details are given for other years. As late 

 as the seventeenth" century, however, the copyholders, who were then the 

 only kind of customary tenants remaining, claimed that the manor had always 

 been reputed to be ancient demesne. The fine on death or alienation was 

 declared to be fixed at the rate of two years' quit-rent or old accustomed rent, 

 which had been zs. a year. 



Another kind of tenancy was to be found on the manors of Langley 

 Marish " and Cippenham," in the hundred of Stoke. A class of tenants 

 called ' gavelmen ' are mentioned in the ministers' accounts at both places, 

 but there is no clue to their exact status. Probably the men held their land 

 by a tenure on the border-line between freehold and villeinage, but the only 

 definite statement classes them amongst the customary tenants, though their 

 services were very slight. 



The terms of tenure, whether free or villein, within the manor were 

 closely connected with the system of agriculture generally known as the 

 three-field system. The arable land was divided into three large open fields, 



* Assize R. 1 188. " Chart. R. 5 John, pt. 117, mm. 6, 7 ; Chan. Inq. p.m. *$ Edvr. I, 50*. 



- Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), i, 34. " Arch. \. 98. " P.R.O. Min. Accu. bdle. 761, No. 13. 

 " Exch. Dcp. Mich. 26 Chas. II, No. 46 ; Mich. 29 Chts. II, No. 18. 



" P.R.O. Mint. Accu. bdle. 761, No. 17. " Ibid. bdle. 760, No. 4. 



47 



