A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



small compared with the value of the whole work, but some men would have 

 been paying a new and increased rent covering everything due from their 

 tenements. At Beaumond 8S nine tenants held their tenements for a money rent 

 for all services, but it is doubtful whether they were holding in villeinage or 

 not. One cottage and curtilage seems to have been a customary tenement, 

 but the tenant was not included in the list of the lord's bondsmen. In an 

 extent M of the manors of Missenden Abbey none of the tenants performed 

 more than fifteen days' service in the year, and generally only four days' mow- 

 ing, six days' hay-making, four days' reaping, and attendance at the great 

 boon-day were required. As a rule they were paying several shillings as rent 

 and were presumably customary tenants, when heriot was paid, but no 

 distinctions in tenure are actually made. 



At Wendover 85 men were hired to help with the hay, and all reaping 

 was paid for by the acre in 1338. 



In Stoke Hundred, at Cippenham in 1318 and 1319 8 * apparently all the 

 regular work was commuted, but some thrashing was done by the tenants, 

 and at Langley, 87 Ditton, and Datchet 88 commutation was practically com- 

 plete except for boon-work. In Datchet certain work had been ' of old ' 

 commuted for a fixed sum of money paid at Michaelmas. Whaddon, in 

 Cottesloe Hundred, is the only manor of which the minister's accounts are 

 preserved in which commutation does not seem to have taken place before 

 the middle of the fourteenth century, for there were no farm servants nor 

 had the tenants paid money instead of performing their services until 1356 

 and I357- 89 



Besides arable land the tenants of the manors held meadow and rights 

 of common in the pastures and waste lands. The meadow contained both 

 the separate inclosure of the lord and the common meadow used by both free 

 and customary tenants, but trespassing in the lord's meadow with cattle was 

 an offence presented at the manorial courts with extraordinary regularity. 

 The system seems to have been to inclose the "meadow until a certain date, 

 when all the hay would have been carried, and then to throw it open for the 

 cattle of all the tenants. At Kingsey, in I322, 90 the whole body of cus- 

 tomary tenants had broken this rule, and were presented in the court ' pro 

 herba apperlata contra consuetudine in prato de la More.' The meadow land 

 was in some places distributed among the different tenants by lot, but though 

 probably the custom was an old one, the existing instances are found in later 

 records. At Aylesbury, 91 in a rental of the reign of Henry VIII, two copy- 

 holders held pieces of meadow land that had come to them by lot. Rights 

 of common in the pasture lands were also attached to different tenements, 

 but the tenants in villeinage could only claim them by custom, which was 

 very generally recognized. In Bernwood Forest and Whaddon Chase the 

 inhabitants of the neighbouring manors had rights of common for their 

 cattle, and others again could obtain leave by a small payment. This was 

 the common custom in manors where the lord had inclosed his woods or 

 parks, agistamentum for cattle being a very frequent entry in the accounts. 



83 P.R.O. Ct. R. ptfo. 155, No. 2. " Harl. MS. 3688. 



85 P.R.O. Mins. Accts. bdle. 793, No. 8. " Ibid. bdle. 760, No. 3. 



87 Ibid. bdle. 761, No. 17. " Ibid. bdle. 760, No. 18. Ibid. bdle. 764, No. I. 



90 P.R.O. Ct. R. ptfo. 155, No. 15. 9l P.R.O. Rentals and Surv. R. \. 



52 



