A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



sale and purchase of stock. He had the superintendence of the manorial 

 stud farms, the up-keep of saddle or draught horses for the baron's own use, 

 and had to receive such colts, mares, or stallions as were put under his 

 care, or to forward them as required to any given place. With the manor 

 and its farms went, of course, the management of the manorial vaccaries 

 scattered on the edge of the forest, and the payment of the cowkeepers and 

 cheese makers. It would even seem that the management of the chase was 

 under the bailiffs care, as he paid the parker and his assistants their wages, as 

 well as those of the wolf-watchers, and had to provide for the strawing of 

 fodder and the cutting of branches for the wild animals in the winter, for the 

 making of dear leaps, for the taking, salting, and forwarding of the wild boar 

 and venison, whithersoever the lord might require it to be sent.*' In short 

 the bailiffs responsibility appears to have been as absolute as his opportunities 

 of personal aggrandisement must have been manifold. 



Of the royal manors belonging to the lord of Lancaster, we read 

 little in the Pipe Rolls," except that in 1194, after John's rebellion, 

 those and others in the honour were understocked, and the sheriff, as 

 we have seen, claimed payment for the purchase of *^ 240 cows, i 5 bulls, 

 80 brood mares, and 120 ewes wherewith to replenish them. Mr. Farrer 

 tells us that in 1 178 these twenty-five manors had 58I teams of oxen assigned 

 to them," which, at the estimate of eight oxen to a team,*' meant a herd of 

 468 oxen kept for ploughing and draught purposes. This would give an 

 average of nearly 19 oxen to a manor, supposing the manors to be all the same 

 size, which they were not. In the records for another part of the county we 

 learn further details of these cattle herds, for which Lancashire appears to have 

 been famous in the Middle Ages and long after, for a writer in the eighteenth 

 century (1749) tells us that even then the Lancashire cattle were remark- 

 able for their great size, in point of which they were only rivalled by those of 

 Somersetshire." 



The vaccaries of the honour of Clitheroe belonged, in the end of the 

 thirteenth century, to Henry de Lacy, earl of Lincoln, and from the Compotus 

 Roll for the year 1295—6" we find a mixed herd of 2,330 cattle were at that 

 time kept in the great forest of Blackburnshire. The herds were distributed 

 as follows : — 



For Accrington Vaccaries the details are not given. 



" See the De Lacy Compotus of the Honor of Clitheroe (Chet. Soc. cxii), passim 

 " Farrer, Lanes. Pipe R. passim. 



*' See above, note 1 6, Mag. Rot. Pip. 6 Ric. (i 193-4), R. 40, m. 9. 

 •' Farrer, Lanes. Pipe R. 37. « Ibid. 94. 



" John Oviren, Britannia Depicta (4th ed. Lond. 1749), 236. 



" De Lacy Compotus (Chet. Soc. cxii), 138-40. Instaurators and cowkeepers of Blackburnshire render 

 their account at Ightenhill, 27 Jan. 1297 ; from Sept. 1295 to Sept. 1296. 



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