A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



raise by unjust extortions from the men of the hundreds. In the case of 

 Rotherbridge the grievance was aggravated by the fact that in old days the 

 bailiff or alderman of the hundred 26 was elected by the scotters, and in those 

 days they 'gave little or nothing for their bailiwick.' Other complaints 

 mention the erection of new courts, 27 the amercing of freemen and villeins 

 in their absence, forcing freemen to serve as jurors without the king's writ, 

 interference with rights of common, and abuses by foresters, who received no 

 payment for their office but such as they could raise by ' weypenny ' and the 

 payments (vadia) which they could exact in the woods of freemen, while 

 their presentments in the forest courts ' though they were false were yet held 

 to be true.' 28 



Turning, however, from general social evils to the details of status and 

 tenure within the county, the first point to notice is the increase of freedom 

 between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. Domesday evidence 

 would seem to show that much depression of status had followed upon the 

 Conquest. Freemen occur in the Survey in the time of Edward the Con- 

 fessor, but not one is mentioned as a tenant in 1086. This does not probably 

 mean, however, that the entire English population had been reduced to 

 villeinage ; indeed there is evidence to prove that this was not, strictly speak- 

 ing, the case. A survey in the Battle Abbey Chronicle, which professes to 

 represent the state of the Lowy at about the time of the foundation of the 

 monastery (io8o), 29 mentions three instances of a certain limited condition of 

 freedom these were Gilbert the Stranger, who, with his land, was quit 

 except for tithes and two services a year, one to Canterbury and one to 

 London ; Aluric de Dengemareis, who acted as summoner on his land in 

 Dengemarsh (Kent) when it owed service (' summonitionem facit de terra 

 ejusdem Aelurici in Dengemareis quando servitium suum facere debet ') ; and 

 Benedict the Seneschal (dapifer], who was entirely free. Aelric ' cild,' whose 

 title might have been supposed to imply freedom, owed jd. and labour 

 services, like the rest of the tenants. Again, in Telham, which lay outside 

 the Lowy, there was one man who was free because whenever he was 

 summoned he rode where he was told, his food and his horse's shoes being 

 provided by the monks. 



It is noticeable, however, that though the word ' free ' is actually 

 used of these men, and in the case of Gilbert the Stranger, of his land also, 

 yet in each case freedom was conditional upon the performance of a 

 service not unlike a serjeanty, and was obviously a matter of privilege 

 rather than of birthright a concession based upon the need of the overlord, 

 rather than a survival of pre-Conquest status. Between the eleventh 



K The Sussex hundreds were frequently administered by aldermen. In the barony of the Eagle the 

 barons and knights were quit of suit at the county court, save the aldermen of the hundreds, who did suit 

 there for their hundreds. (Ibid. 205.) In Shiplake Hundred an inquisition was taken in 1260 by twelve free 

 jurors and by all the ' Borowesaldres of the hundred ' possibly the aldermen of the ' burghs," a term which 

 is used frequently in Sussex manor and hundred rolls for a tithing or vill. (Add. Ct. R. 32399 and 

 32609, &c.) In Swanborough Hundred the alderman, 'as a recompence of his paynes and in satisfaction of 

 those moneys w ch he disburseth for the Hundred at the Shiriffes Tome twice every yeare,' had a yearly render 

 of sheaves of wheat. (Sust. Arch. Coll. xxix, 121.) 



" Hund. R. (Rec. Com.), 212, 214. " Ibid. 201, 203, 208, 210, 214. 



19 Chron. Men. de Bella (Angl. Christ. Soc.), 12 et seq. The chronicler, writing in the following century, 

 says : ' The brethren . . . allotted dwelling places of certain dimensions around the circuit of the abbey ; and 

 these still remain as they were then first appointed with their customary rent or service." 



172 



