74 



FEUDALISM IN GUERNSEY. 



a gallon of ale from each brewing. Also to provide him with 

 firewood and furze for the use of the Manor House, carry 

 their lord or his family to Jersey three times a year, receiving 

 for this the same payment " as given by our lord the king to 

 his tenants," as well as to pay tithes of their fish, cart 

 the lord's corn wherever ordered in the island, besides paying 

 other dues such as chef rente, chickens, loaves of bread, and 

 money rents. In return, the lord of the manor provided the 

 seneschal and vavassors for the Manor Court. 



These services give us an idea of the different working 

 of two important Guernsey manors in feudal times. On 

 Fief du Comte, a large manor straggling over four parishes, 

 from St. Peter' s-in-the-Wood to the Vale, with no Manor 

 House attached to it, but consisting principally of frank-fiefs 

 and free holdings, with two compact groups of villein holdings, 

 the " Trente-deux vilaine Bouvees," at the Castel, and " Les 

 Onze Bouvees Nord-Est," at St. Saviour's ; the vellein tenants 

 only owed personal service to their lord in connection with the 

 collection and guarding the tithes of their corn and flax, until 

 such time as the grainger of the manor took charge of it. 

 On Sausmarez Manor, a smaller and compact estate, the 

 holdings were almost entirely villein, and held by a variety 

 of personal services. These services formed part of the rent 

 due by the tenants, and they provided the lord of the manor 

 with provisions for his household, and for the carriage of 

 his goods and produce. In neither case do we find any 

 provision for working the farm lands of the seigneur, which 

 in England always formed part of services of the villeins. 



Already, by the end of the fifteenth century, these 

 personal services were found irksome, for the villein tenant 

 of one lord was frequently the free tenant of another, or 

 of the king, and often a large landowner. In 1480 we 

 find record of a dispute between the Seigneur of Saumarez 

 and one of his tenants, who had refused to cart " la feugere 

 du seigneur a son hostel," and though the tenant was a 

 member of an important family, and a large landowner on 

 other fiefs, he was sentenced to " une journee au regard du 

 chateau." We must hope that twenty-four hours' contem- 

 plation of Castle Cornet brought him to a proper sense of 

 his duties. 



We also find some tenants owing such rents as chickens 

 with tails an inch long, capons, geese from their ponds, 

 eels, eggs, and even congers. The latter seem to have been 

 looked upon as an important article of barter even down 

 to the beginning of the seventeenth century. So many 



