By the Rev. W. G. Clark- Maxwell, F.S.A. 317 



namely, the gradual substitution of a money payment for the 

 labour-rent originally exacted. This was an arrangement equally 

 convenient to the lord and to the tenant, for the lord obtained the 

 value of his tenant's labour in the most convenient form, while 

 the tenant became master of the whole of his time. And it is 

 specially worthy of notice that the gradual extension of this custom 

 made it advisable to record in the cartulary of Lacock what the 

 labour-services were, lest through disuse they might be forgotten. 

 Another interesting feature in some cases of the abbey estates is, 

 that when a double record, fifteen to twenty years apart, is pre- 

 served, the earlier states the labour due and adds as an alternative 

 " or he shall pay [5s.] and not work," whereas the later record puts 

 the money -payment first, and the labour-rent afterwards, as less 

 likely to be rendered by the tenant. This change from labour to 

 money rents took place, therefore, on the Lacock estates, roughly 

 speaking, in the last quarter of the thirteenth century : and more 

 or less about the same time over England generally. But with 

 the terrible visitation known as the Black Death in 1348-9 there 

 came a great scarcity of labour, and consequent attempts on the 

 part of the landlords to force things back into their old state of 

 compulsory labour on the land, since the price of hired labour had 

 risen enormously, while the money-rents remained at their old 

 figure. Hence such legislation as the Statute of Labourers, 1351, 

 and other attempts to put back the hands of the clock of social 

 progress. 



If we turn now from these general considerations to some special 

 points of the customs of the manors now before us we may notice 

 one or two points of interest from the local point of view. One is 

 that the milk of a cow is described as " album," " the white," 

 equivalent to " le blank," or "le blaunk," to be found in Walter de 

 Henley's treatise of husbandry, and elsewhere, in the fourteenth 

 century. Another is that some honoured county names may be 

 here found in an embryonic form, as in the case of " Willelmus 

 Muriweder," of the manor of Bishopstrow. Throughout the 

 documents the surnames occur in a very indeterminate form, and 

 are apparently in the very act of fixation. Thus " Galfridus 



