FEUDALISM IN GUERNSEY. 



75 



congers of good merchantable size often figure in the note 

 book of George Fashion, Seigneur d'Anneville, as part of 

 the rent due from the tenants of his farms. No donbt 

 they were salted down for future household use. 0 wing- 

 to the subdivision of property by our laws of inheritance, 

 these small rents became sometimes divided up into minute 

 particles, one notable lawsuit in 1887 was brought by the 

 prevot of Blanchelande against three of the tenants of the 

 fief for the payment of " one fowl, one half and one sixteenth 

 of a fowl, one fortieth and one four hundred and eightieth 

 part of a fowl, twenty-eight eggs, and three-fourths and 

 one-eighth of an egg," fivepence being the usual fine for 

 non-payment. 



In old Guernsey documents are also to be found curious 

 redevances. For instance, the Abbot of Mont St. Michel 

 owed the Crown Officers three dinners a year, and the Prior 

 of Lihou owed one to the tenants of the Fief Thomas 

 Blondel. In 1393 a rent of a chaplet of roses on St. 

 John's Day was owed by John Benest to the heirs of 

 Denis Le Marchant, and another even more curious one of 

 " a dozen butterflies," was the subject of a lawsuit in 1591. 

 Cakes at Christmas time or at Easter are also frequently 

 met with. These nominal rents are supposed to owe their 

 origin to gifts of land, and as it was impossible to give 

 outright land held of another person, they are simply a 

 " pro forma " acknowledgment of tenure. 



Dinners to tenants on special occasions were frequently 

 given in the middle ages. To this day the Royal Court, 

 the Crown Officers, and the Seigneurs of fiefs owing suit 

 of court, dine at the king's expense after each of the 

 Courts of Chief Pleas. The ancient name of these dinners 

 was "Diner avec le Roi." Formerly they were held much 

 more frequently than three times a year, as at present. 

 An old document now in the archives at St. Lo, dating early 

 in the reign of Edward I., gives a list of the following 

 other occasions : — When the Bailiff chose the juries of 

 the parishes for the assizes, when he inspected the king's 

 highways, and when he taxed the fines of the assizes. 

 Also, when a felon forfeited his goods to the king, or 

 when a trial by battle was appealed and when it was 

 fought. 



The seigneurs of the principal fiefs also owed their 

 tenants a dinner after the three annual Courts of Chief 

 Pleas. This custom is still kept up on many fiefs at the 

 present day. 



