A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



The summons by the St. Albans townsmen to the country vills must 

 have asked for representatives if ' procuratores ' " is to be taken Hterally, and 

 of course the procedure of election was familiar. Actually the countrymen 

 came in troops, not as representatives ; about forty came from Berkhamp- 

 stead." There may have been secret arrangements with the representatives 

 of the vills beforehand. ' We have pacts with thirty vills ' " ; the villeins of 

 Barnet were bound to them by oaths [foederati)}^ Possibly the oath was to 

 maintain the rights of the king and of the Commons, as the proclamation 

 made by the townsmen ran. This ' federating ' extended not only to vills in 

 the liberty of the Abbot of St. Albans, for Berkhampstead and King's 

 Langley at least were outside. It would be interesting to know whether 

 Cheshunt and Waltham Cross had any communication with the rebels on 

 the western side of the county, but it is more probable that they were in 

 touch with the Essex rising. 



The revolt was not quelled without reprisal. There were mysterious 

 fires in St. Albans. A certain Bidwell made a false confession that Henry 

 Grindecobbe, William's brother, had suborned him to fire the abbot's 

 prison." But after this the resistance of the townsmen grew weaker and 

 weaker. Barnet was the first to act, and that not until nearly forty years 

 after the revolt. In the summer of 14 17 Johne atte Mille and John Penne 

 and other copyholders entered into a confederacy binding themselves to 

 resist the abbot and his servants. On the plea that they held land freely 

 they withheld certain services — suit to the abbot's court, heriot on death or 

 surrender, the determination of pleas of tenements and contract in the 

 abbot's court, and the buying of a licence for all ahenation of land on demise 

 for a term. These are obviously the ordinary villein dues. The demand was 

 for freedom of tenure, and was in effect and partly in wording the same as 

 that of 1381 "; and in this case, too, the demand came from the 

 prosperous. One John Beauchamp, the builder of all the ancient part of 

 Barnet Church which now remains and a London merchant, had a large 

 holding of a house and a cottage with gardens, 30 acres arable, 29 of 

 meadow and 4 of wood. He paid 191. 9^. a year and carried half a cart- 

 load of fuel to the abbot's hospice in London. The services of the other 

 tenants were similar. Many of the tenants lived away — one, indeed, in 

 London.'' The case was tried at the autumn assizes, and the villeins were 

 judged guilty and imprisoned until October 1427, when they paid a fine of 

 'bs.^M. each> 



At St. Albans in 1434 there was a recrudescence of the old spirit of 

 resistance. Abbot John ot Wheathampstead had just returned from the 

 Council of Siena. A ' great crowd ' of the villeins came to him to accuse 

 the monks of withdrawing the bare rights of the town as to boundaries ' and 

 other liberties justly due.' A day was appointed (not without references by 

 the abbot to the downfall of the men of Barnet and to Dathan and Abiram) 

 and the villeins brought their ' supplication.' They asked for common of 

 pasture to certain points round the town, and in Barnet Wood, Frithwood 



" Wahingham, Gesta Jb'.atuii, iii, 287. »3 Coram Rege R. 482, m. 28. 



" \\'alsingham, Gesta Abbdtum, iii, 380. " Walsingham, Hut. Angl. i, 472. 



'* Walsingham, Gesta Abbatum, iii, 362, 364. " See above. 



^ Assize R. 340, m. 3-6. " jbid. 



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