SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



'for the record also speaks of the profit accruing from the ' market ' of 

 daughters, the special mark of servile status in those days. 28 



The examples cited refer to the eastern and southern part of the county. 

 The state of affairs as it existed near the western border is illustrated by the 

 record of a manor court held at Wrottesley in 1382, one year after the 

 Peasants' Revolt. 29 Of the seventeen tenants four only were freeholders, six 

 are described as ' holding in bondage,' and the rest were crofters or 

 cottagers. Reference is made to a certain Hugh Roberdes who had lately 

 died, leaving a daughter who had recently married with the permission of the 

 lord. Yet all the tenants were paying rent for their holdings, despite the 

 dependence of their position in some ways as shown by the lord's control 

 over the marriage of their daughters indicated above. 



References to the food contributions of tenants holding in bondage persist 

 till quite late in manor rolls, even when the tenants are paying rent, e.g. at 

 Rolleston in I4I4. 30 In a list of receipts occurs the entry of 5^. J\d, and fifty- 

 three capons, the rent of tenants 'holding in bondage.' Again, in 1480, in a 

 bailiff's account we hear of the contribution of capons or fowls by the 

 Walsall tenants, and reference is still made at that date to their 'works,' though 

 these were by that time commuted. 31 



At Barton, in the honour of Tutbury, in 1463 some tenants were still 

 holding land in return for services alone, 33 so that it is clear that villeinage and 

 its servile accompaniments died but slowly in this county. A fairly late 

 example of the way the ordinary villein was tied to the soil occurs in the 

 record of a ' Magna Curia' held at Wrottesley in 1401, in which the jury 

 presented that John de Green, ' the native,' had left his home without his 

 lord's permission, a serious offence in mediaeval times. 33 



Of the wild, barren, moorland region of North Staffordshire we know 

 but little in early times ; even now it is a thinly populated district, made up 

 chiefly of scattered hamlets and villages, and containing scarcely any towns. 

 In the fourteenth century, apart from the few villages in the region now 

 known as the Potteries and those districts near the fertile banks of the Dove 

 or its tributary streams, this part of the country had but little economic 

 or social importance. 84 



With regard to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, all the most recent 

 researches have failed to discover that the Staffordshire peasants had any part 

 in it, though we now know that the tenants on the bishop of Chester's manors 

 in the Wirral were implicated. 



This must not be hastily taken to prove that the grievances of the Stafford- 

 shire peasants were less severe than those of other counties ; their failure to 

 participate in the movement may be regarded, in part at any rate, as a result 



18 The Will. Salt Arch. Sac. Coll. pt. ii, ix, 29. ** Ibid, vi (New Ser.), pt. ii, 175. 



30 Mins. Accts. bdle. 988, No. 20. 3I Ibid. bdle. 641, No. 1041 1. 



" Ibid. bdle. 371, No. 6197. 



The Will. Salt Arch. Soc. Coll. pt. i (New Ser.), 1 84. There are in Staffordshire, as elsewhere, numerous 

 instances of survivals of manorial courts, e.g. the case of Standon, where we have evidence of the holding 

 of a court baron at least as late as 1750, and the record of fines levied on freeholders for various offences such 

 as omitting to repair roads, ditches, and fences (Edward Salt, Hist, of StanJon (1888), 137). 



" As to the early condition of the villages in the Potteries see Meteyard's Life of Josiah JVeJgatooJ, 

 101, where she affirms her belief that for three or four centuries after the Norman Conquest the liberty of 

 establishing a pot-works on the waste, and of digging for clay and coal, was conferred by manorial lords in 

 return for services, commuted later for rents. 



I 28l 36 



