By Sir Charles Hob7iouse } Bart, 



81 



It was the king's commissioners who made the valuation, and on 

 this account and from its approximation in many respects to the 

 valuation of Domesday, it was most probably sufficiently accurate. 



It is remarkable that, after a lapse of over two hundred years, 

 there should have been so little variation in the arable cultivation 

 and in the population of the manor and parish. 



The arable land is somewhere about twenty-eight acres less in 

 extent than it was. The number of families is three less, but as a 

 community of thirteen monks would probably be within itself a 

 larger family than that of the lord of a manor, the population would 

 still be about equal to the seventy souls of 1086. 



On the other hand the pasture land has risen from three to thirty- 

 six acres, and the woodlands from twenty to thirty-eight acres, 

 whilst the status of the population has materially altered for the 

 better. 



The servi have entirely disappeared, absorbed perhaps in the 

 domestic servants of the priory ; and the bordarii and villani have 

 become, probably under the peculiarly beneficent rule of the monks, 

 practically freeholders, paying rent in money or in labor for the 

 lands and tenements they hold. 



Of any oppressive feudal tenure there is no sign, and on the con- 

 trary there is every sign of industry and progress in the improved 

 social position of the population, and in the addition, in so compara- 

 tively short an interval, of a considerable acreage of land to the 

 cultivated area. 



The third period is A.D. 1535, when a return of assets and out- 

 goings was made by the last Prior, just before and in order to the 

 dissolution, and we can imagine the feelings of the worthy com- 

 munity, for worthy they had proved to be, when made to sign, as 

 it were, their own death-warrant. 

 The following are the particulars : — 



Curia, with garden, pigeonry, and curtilage, 



valued at £1 . 0 . 0. 

 6 Libere tenentium ,, 3.4.4. 



21 Coterelli. „ 4.8.2. 



3 Villani and their labor, festivals excluded 1.0.0. 



VOL. XX. — NO. LVIII. G 



