NOTES ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF STONEHOUSE. 349 
key .... quod noc vicin — tocius ville and " Habent f umus et 
alia vilia iacent in vico ad noc." 
Pleas of debt and other disputes were likewise settled at the 
court ; for example Stephen Adam and Alice his wife, were 
to satisfy John Hunne with 3s. 6d. for bread bought of him — 
"per pane ab eo empt." 
The general duties of the tenants of the manor are shown by an 
entry in the same year (8 Henry VII.) that a place called "le key" 
was out of repair; and that it was the part of the tenants to 
repair the same — "Omnes tenentes de Eststonhouse repar tehenta." 
So they had a day fixed, the octave of the nativity of St. John 
the Baptist, by which sufficient repair was to be made, under 
penalty of a fine of 40s. 
The total receipts of the two courts held this year were — court 
fees 5s. 8d., fines, of lands 16s. 4d., injuries 3s. ; while a silver 
cup, cipheas argenti, was taken as a heriot in the case of 
Philip Hurde, jun. The seneschal's or steward's expenses were 
14s. 2d. 
John Knebone was bailiff of East Stonehouse in the latter part 
of the fifteenth century ; and a note of his accounts from Michael- 
mas, 11 Henry VII., to Michaelmas, 12 Henry VII. — 1495, 
1496 — has been preserved. The rents of assize were <£41 0s. 2d. ; 
the customary works — "de opibz custum " — lis. 6d. ; total, 
£41 lis. 8d. 
This shows a very considerable increase in the size and 
importance of the place relatively, not merely since Domesday, but 
much more recent times. What Stonehouse was under the 
Durnfords in the middle of the fifteenth century, is fairly 
indicated indeed by a deed of grant of James Durnford, in 1462 
(1 Edward IV.), of arable land and waste in East Stonehouse, 
"except the village there, all messuages, &c, and a small close 
called Pese Park, otherwise Buthay, and except common of pasture 
for horses of fishermen on Wynrigg, Whyttor, and the hill near 
Horspool." 
Here we have Stonehouse called a village ; but we can get more 
than a century further back. 
A record of the " fifteenth " paid in what we may call the 
Plymouth assessment district in a mayoralty of Thomas Clowter — 
1537, 1544, 1551, or 1556 — supplies some indication of relative 
value at the time the assessment was first made. The four wards 
