SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



kinds of trade and agriculture. The towns throve after their fashion, and 

 secured confirmations of their charters. The county greatly benefited by the 

 disafforesting of lands within the metes of the forest.*" The result of this last 

 enactment must have been to give a beneficial impetus to stock-raising, and 

 from the records of the period we are able to gather a distinct impression of 

 the way in which these great mediaeval manors were managed, and in some 

 cases to discover the average head of cattle raised in the forest vaccaries. 



Where the lord kept the manor in his own hands instead of farming it out 

 to a tenant, the working of the estate was left to a head baiHfF, with clerks and 

 assistant bailiffs under his supervision. The person in charge of vaccaries was 

 styled the ' Instaurator,' or stock-keeper. Sometimes, though the instaurator and 

 constable were separate officers, the services of both were requisitioned in the 

 management and buying of stock." It is probable that the actual rolls were 

 kept and written by the baron's chief clerk or chaplain, as few except the 

 clergy could write in those times ; and the accounts were moreover kept in 

 monkish Latin, with which it is very improbable the baihff was acquainted. 

 Nothing was too insignificant to be entered upon the roll, which records 

 every detail of income or expenditure, from the amount of wild honey 

 obtained during the year to the number of candles used in any particular 

 cow-place or 'vaccary.'*' 



The office of manorial bailiff was indeed no sinecure in the thirteenth 

 century, as a brief study of his responsibilities will prove. He had assistant 

 bailiffs under his direction, but he was finally responsible for every farthing of 

 income or expenditure belonging to the estate.'" One of his first cares was 

 the management of stock, the raising of sufficient plough oxen to work the 

 manor, and their proper distribution among the various farms. He had also 

 to provide sufficient swine and sheep, not merely for the lord's household, but 

 also for the feeding and clothing of the workers on the manor. There was 

 the raising of grain, wheat, oats, barley, peas, and beans hemp and flax, as 

 well as the mowing of hay meadows, and the pasturing of cows and oxen. 

 He had to judge which lands were to be ploughed, and which were to lie 

 fallow every third year according to the plan pursued by cultivation upon the 

 three-field system.** He had to arrange for the letting of certain pastures, 

 or for the ' agistment ' of other cattle upon the lord's pastures ; he had to 

 collect the rents of all places that were let to farm, such as mills, forges, 

 furnaces, dovecotes, fruit gardens, and common ovens. He had the receiving 

 of the lord's market tolls and weekly stallages as well as those of fair time. 

 He had the payment of wages upon the estate ; the distribution of corn 

 allowances, the over-looking of damage to fences or buildings, and the 

 ordering and superintendence of repairs, the erection of new buildings, the 



" Cal. of Close, 1227-31, pp. loo-i. In 1229 to the men of Liverpool Henry III granted the town for 

 four years for a farm of ^10 a year ; Pat. Hen. Ill, m. 9. In 1328, just a hundred years later, the king 

 granted to the bailiff and men of Liverpool three years' pavage ; Cal. of Pat. 1327-30, p. 231. The king 

 granted the men of Preston that by \\ev/ of his forester they might have the dead and dry wood lying on the 

 ground in the forest of Fulwood ; Cal. of Pat. 1225-32, p. ilz. 



" Cf. De Lacy Compotus (Chet. Soc. cxii), 126. 



" Cf. Prof. T. Rogers, Jgric. and Prices, i, 64. ' No source of income, however small, was neglected or 

 unappropriated by the feudal superior.' 



" Cf. Uamecestre, ii (Extent of Manchester, 1322) ; the bailiff, pp. 374. 397- 'And there is a certain 

 bailiff, and Serjeant of the lord, sworn to him to ride about and superintend his demesne and to pay the lord 

 the rents of the outside tenants, and other things as fines (or amerciaments) and things of that kind.' 



" Cunningham, Growth of Indust. and Commerce. 



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