A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



nominally, at his lord's disposal. Hence he could neither bequeath nor 

 transfer his holding, which, strictly speaking, escheated to the lord on the 

 death of the tenant. Ordinarily, however, his son would be allowed to 

 succeed him on payment of a fine, and on going through the same formula 

 of admittance as a new tenant. Here is a typical example from a Court 

 Roll of Hawkesbury Manor : 



A cottage and adjacent curtilage (i.e. small plot or garden) is remaining in the lord's 

 hands. Thereupon comes Thomas Rooke and takes them, to hold according to the custom 

 of the manor for life, paying all the same customary rents and services as did his father, 

 William Rooke. He pays a fine of one shilling, and does fealty. 1 



Or a tenant might, by a fine paid during his lifetime, secure his son's 

 succession to his tenement; e.g. at Bisley, 1354 : 



Walter Tymbercombe, tenant of a messuage and half a yardland for his own and his 

 wife's lifetime, gives to the lord a fine of 13*. \d. in order that John, his younger son, 

 may, after their deaths, hold the same for the same services. 3 



Or, again, the fine might be paid in the son's own name, as in an amusing 

 instance at Hawkesbury (1448-9), where a child of six presented the lord 

 with a salmon in order to obtain the reversion of his father's holding. 5 

 Fines for reversions are, indeed, of common occurrence in Manor Court 

 Rolls, a fact which seems to indicate a great thirst for the holding of 

 land. A fine would also often procure a licence to alienate land. Without 

 such permission alienation by one villein tenant to another was void,* and 

 ordinarily the form of surrender by the existing tenant and regrant to his 

 would-be lessee was insisted upon. 6 Freeholders were, of course, exempt 

 from these restrictions, as were burgage tenants, 6 who, at Cheltenham, for 

 instance, in the fourteenth century could bequeath and alienate freely. 7 

 Wives, too, had rights of inheritance, varying from ' villein dower,' which 

 allowed them the whole, to ' free-bench,' 8 which gave the wife of a copy- 

 holder a half of the husband's estate. 8 Still the legal theory that the 

 tenant's rights were derived from the lord was kept up by the enforcement 

 of fines and of the payment of heriots, and by the occasional deprivation of 

 the tenant for misconduct, such as quitting the manor without leave, or 

 persistent neglect to repair. 10 



The heriot itself was a sign of the lord's claim over his villeins' pro- 

 perty ; and * merchet,' the fine exacted for marriage of a villein's daughter, 

 was the result of the same theory. The death or the marriage of a villein were 

 both equivalent in the lord's eyes to ' a transfer of property out of the range 

 of his power.' 11 Merchet probably varied according to the steward's estimate 

 of the value of the bride ; zs. only was paid by a base tenant of Cheltenham 

 (1333) for leave to give his daughter in marriage, while 4OJ. was exacted 



1 Ct. R. (P.R.O.), portf. 175, No. 9, m. I. Fitzherbert, a writer of the sixteenth century, gives the 

 following form of fealty for a villein : ' Here you, my lord, that I, fro this day forth, to you shal be faithful 

 and lowly, and to you shal do al the customes and services that I ought to do to you, for the landes that I hold 

 of you in Vyllenage.' ' Ct. R. portf. 175, No. 7, m. 15. 



1 Ct. R. portf. 175, No. 53, m. 2. 4 Cf. Hawkesbury Ct. R. 7 Hen. V, portf. 175, No. 50, m. 6. 



4 Cf. Hawkesbury Ct. R. 17 Ric. II, portf. 175, No. 46, m. I. 



* Burgage was a privileged tenure, usual in towns, and nearly resembling freehold. 



7 Ct. R. portf. 175, Nos. 25 and 26. 



' Bisley Ct. R. Eliz. portf. 175, No. 13, m. ^. Also Cal.ofRec. of Corp. ofGlouc. ed. W. H. Stevenson, 

 No. 456. 



9 Murray, New Eng. Diet. 'Free-bench.' Also Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of Eng. Late, ii, 416-25. 

 10 Cf. Bisley Ct. R. portf. 175, Nos. 7, 10, and 13. " Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, 347. 



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