By the Rev. W. G. Clark-Maxwell, F.S.A. 



313 



Taken together these customs give us an interesting view of the 

 condition of some of the estates of Lacock Abbey at the close of 

 the thirteenth century. To understand the meaning of the various 

 entries it is needful to realise that in a manor the arable land and 

 pasture were divided, roughly speaking, into the tenants' land, 

 held in varying quantities and on various conditions, and the 

 demesne land, which was retained, as a rule, in the lord's own hand 

 and cultivated by his officers or ministri and the labour of the 

 customary tenants. Sometime the demesne lay in one undivided 

 piece, but often it was intermixed in the open fields with the half- 

 acre strips, into which the tenants' land was divided, in the fashion 

 which seems so unreasonable and wasteful to our modern ideas. 

 Of the tenants there were, as a rule, two divisions : (1) the liber e 

 tenentes, or free tenants, who paid a money rent or an acknowledg- 

 ment for their lands, and on whom no further claim could be 

 made ; (2) the custumarii, or tenentes in villenagio, the customary 

 tenants or villeins, who were further subdivided into three classes : 

 (a) the virgatarii, who held a virgate, or sometimes — as at Hed- 

 dington — half that quantity ; the virgate, or yardland, containing, 

 as a rule, thirty acres of land scattered in detached half-acre 

 strips over the open fields of the manor. These are also called 

 " Erdlinges," or " Half-ercllinges," as in the manor of Bromham, which 

 belonged to Battle Abbey, 1 and the holders as being the typical villein 

 holders, were often called " villani " par excellence. Below these 

 were (b) the cottagers who usually held about four acres of land : 

 cotarii, who represented the class described in Domesday as " bor- 

 darii." (c) the coterelli, who seem to have been the Domesday 

 serfs, or servi, risen to the rank of small cottagers, with, however, 

 as a rule, no land attached to their house and curtilage. 



The work done by the tenants on the demesne may be classified 

 under four heads : — 



(1) Precarim, or work done ad precem, or at the request of the 



1 See Custumals of Battle Abbey, Camden Soc, p. vii. For an example of 

 a normal virgate, see Seebohm's English Village Community, 4th edition, 

 p. 24ff. Conveyances of virgates, detailing the separate strips, in Lacock 

 and Heddington, are in the Record Office, Court of Wards, Box 94E, Nos. 51, 

 and 30. 



