A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



The court rolls afford instances of nearly all the ordinary disabilities 

 incident to villein status ; tallage, and merchet, inability to alienate his land 

 without leave, or to leave the manor without paying ' chevage,' inability to 

 acquire land or to marry outside the manor, or to serve whom he would 

 without leave, the obligation to grind his corn at the lord's mill, to send 

 his pigs to the lord's pannage, and to serve as reeve or bailiff when elected, 

 inability to cut timber or to sell the stock on his land without leave, and in 

 spite of all this the necessity to keep his house and tenement in decent repair. 

 Moreover, not only might a man be forced to pay ' capitagium ' if he dwelt 

 in the manor without any settled domicile, 76 but it occasionally happened that 

 if a villein-tenement were unoccupied, the villeinage at the request of the 

 lord would elect one of their number to receive and occupy the land, where- 

 upon he was bound to accept it even against his will. 77 



Yet in many cases the position of the villein was probably not as burden- 

 some as might appear at first sight. On the death of a tenant his wife was 

 entitled to free-bench, and his lands were practically hereditary, though the 

 form of seeking admittance was preserved. 78 A small money fine would 

 generally procure him acquittance of the more burdensome incidents of his 

 tenure, such as the obligation to serve as reeve or beadle 78 a ; and if he took 

 matters into his own hands, as he frequently did, and left the manor, entered 

 into service, married outside the demesne, put his son to school, gave his 

 daughter in marriage, or acquired land without licence, 79 he probably felt this 

 exercise of freedom to be fully worth the consequent fine. In the case of 

 those who fled from the manor without paying chevage, though every effort 

 was made to recover control of them, it was frequently a long time before they 

 were brought back. The whole situation, however, must have depended 

 largely upon the character of the overlord. Isabel St. Leger, who was lady 

 of Warding in May, 1307, remitted all the fines of the view of frankpledge 

 until the coming of the lord, upon condition that he at his coming, if it 

 pleased him, should take the profits of the view without any condition as they 

 had been taken in times past, to which terms the tenants gladly acceded ; 80 

 and in 1310 the Lady Isabel's second husband, Giles de Braunson, accepted a 

 commutation of 2os. for all the tallage due to him from a certain tenant for 

 the term of his life, and pardoned a tenant who had omitted to put up a fence 

 between his land and the lord's demesne. 81 In August of the same year the 

 cow, which was due as heriot on the death of Stephen le Tut, was restored to 

 his widow, ' of the lord's grace, for the soul of Lord John St. Leger,' and the 

 pig, which was the best beast left by Adam ate Hole, was given to his widow 

 Agnes, and on her death two months later to her son and heir William. 82 



Wartling, however, was probably an exceptionally humanely adminis- 

 tered manor, and the lord seems to have reaped consequent benefit, for the 

 cases of neglect of service and consequent ruin of crops are comparatively few. 

 At Ashburnham, on the other hand, in 1275 the lord of the manor treated 

 his villeins with great severity, depriving them of their right to take wood 



76 Add. MS. 33189, fol. 46 (Hamerden custumal). " Add. Ct. R. 31253, 31887, 31898. 



78 Add. Ct. R. of Laughton and Wartling passim ; the widow's free-bench sometimes consisted of the 

 whole (ibid. 31887), sometimes of half (ibid. 32632), and apparently sometimes of a quarter of the tenement 

 (ibid. 32610). 



78a Ibid. 31887. 79 Ibid. 31246, 32630, 32636, 32609, 31885, 31898, 31905. 



80 Ibid. 32613. "Ibid. 32615. "Ibid. 



1 80 



