of these classes is to be returned separately; and so the returns are made out. This direction is of itself a valuable piece of information; for it shows what were the general distinctions of tenants at the period. The expression liberi, or liberè, tenentes which is frequent in these Rolls, occurs very rarely in Domesday, and must therefore have come into general use after the compilation of that record.

If the same minute enumeration which has been made of the population mentioned in Domesday were made with respect to the Hundred Rolls, we should have some very valuable statistics indicating the changes in the distribution of different classes. which occurred in the interval between William I. and Edward I. But this investigation would be extremely laborious. From my own examination of these Rolls I cannot detect any great and marked changes of this kind. In some manors the free tenants and socmen far outnumber the villans, cotars, and serfs. The returns of only five counties-Bedford, Buckingham, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Oxford are given. In Huntingdonshire, at Gomecestr', in answer to the enquiry, 'What and how much each free tenant per cartam, or free socman or bondus, holds of our Lord the King in capite or per medium, and by what service;' the reply, made rather proudly, as we may conjecture, is- As to this they say that they are free socmen, and there is no bondman among them.' And then follows an enumeration of no fewer than 586 tenants, their names, holdings, and rent or services. The holdings are usually of very small extent. The Prior of Merton has upwards of 70 acres ; but the other tenants have for the most part about four or five acres, and rarely so much as sixteen acres. Many of them have only a rood or two

of land.

There are many instances in the Hundred Rolls in which the libere tenentes are by far the largest class of tenants. In the Hundred of Thame, in Oxfordshire, they are many times more numerous than the others, the custumarii and cotarii. At Stepelaston, in the same county, there are forty free tenants and only two who hold in villenage. At Gamelingeye, in Cambridgeshire, forty-three free tenants to nine cotars, and about the same number of custumarii. But in other places the predominance is the other way. For example, at Northlege, in Oxfordshire, there are mentioned only one free tenant and two 'adhuc libere tenentes,' while there are upwards of seventy who hold in villenage, and forty cotars. But this proportion is very unusual. Possibly, on a minute investigation of the circumstances of different manors, the reasons of the great varia

tions in the distribution of these different classes might in some cases be discovered.

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In the Hundred Rolls we have again abundant evidences that villans and cotars were not generally in a state of servitude. At Scharnebroc, in Bedfordshire, we have an enumeration of cotars who are not serfs, but hold to farm' (cotarii qui non sunt servi sed tenent ad firmam).* At Wallhulle there is a list of upwards of thirty persons who are expressly called free cotars (liberi cotarii). In Turveya seven 'free cotars' are mentioned, and they are said to hold in libero cotagio. At Kynebolton, in Huntingdonshire, four free coterells have cottages and pay rents varying from 6d. to 2s. 6d. per annum. The services of tenants, whether in money or labour, are generally fixed and definite. Sometimes we find an entry that certain villans are under the will of the lords as to their labour and holdings, but the proportion of persons thus dependent is certainly much smaller than at the period of Domesday.

Much information respecting the distribution of the agricultural population at a later period, is contained in the manuscript cartularies and rentals which are preserved in the Public Record Office. Of some of these documents, relating mostly to the reigns of Henry IV. and Henry VI., abstracts are given in the Appendix to this work. They do not show any very marked variation in the relative numbers of free tenants and the other classes. But they indicate very clearly that in the fifteenth century absolute servitude had become rare, and that the land was generally divided in small portions held at fixed rents, either in money or labour or both. In a word, the great bulk of the agricultural population in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were peasant proprietors, who were under the obligation of assisting in the cultivation of their landlord's estate, but had a secure legal title to their own holdings.

Firma meant sometimes a pecuniary rent for lands &c. let to tenant, sometimes, by a metonymical mode of expression, the land so let, and sometimes the lease or contract of letting. See Spelman, in voc. Firma, where, as an example of the latter meaning, he quotes this passage from Ingulphus Saxon. Hist. Croyl: Nostram esse possessionem non firmariorum reputant et affirmant, cum adhuc 20 anni de firma illorum restent antequam centum anni concessi compleantur.'

CHAPTER III.

THE SAXON COUNTY COURT.

Courts of Hundreds and Counties.-Folcmot, 22.-Shire moot at Egelnorth's stone, 23.-Rank of Thanes, 24.-Shire moot at Cuckamslow, 25.—Popular character of these Courts, 26.-Assemblies at Ely, 24.—At Northampton, 26.At Huntingdon, 27.-At Erith, 28.-At Penenden Heath, 29.-The Ealdorman, 30.-Assembly of Bishops, Earls, and Villans of Kent, 32.-Villans present in local assemblies, 34.—Meetings held in the open air, 36.

FROM the very commencement of Parliaments knights of the shire were elected in the county courts by the persons entitled to attend there. It is, therefore, necessary to ascertain the constitution of these assemblies, in order to determine the nature of the original county suffrage.

The enquiry involves considerable difficulties. The information derived from contemporaneous authorities is frequently obscure and provokingly imperfect. Points of the highest interest to us are by antient writers passed over almost unnoticed, as matters of common notoriety. It is only by patient examination and comparison of fragments of knowledge collected from many sources that we are able to form any safe conclusions on this subject. Almost every matter connected with the antient constitution of the county courts has in later times become the foundation of a political controversy. Were the suitors-those who owed suit or attendance to these tribunals-a numerous or a restricted class? The question is closely connected with another of more direct interest in later times, Was the county suffrage democratic or oligarchical? These enquiries involve so much dispute that no assertions on the subject ought to be accepted without the support of direct evidence.

Before the Conquest the ordinary local administration of justice took place in the courts of hundreds and of counties. The litigant was first to seek justice in the tribunal of the hundred—a division of the county-and from thence he had an appeal to the court of the shire itself.*

Folemot was the Saxon name for a general meeting of the people (folc, populus; gemote, môt, or moot, conventus). These popular assemblies were frequently held in the open air. Spel• Laws of Cnut, § 18. 19.

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man, in his glossary, observes: It was the antient custom for the people to meet in the open air, and within some military entrenchment, for the sake of safety, and that they might not be drawn into an ambush. There still exist in England many such places in which pleas of counties, rapes, and hundreds are held to this day.'* Sir Francis Palgrave, in his English Commonwealth,' has distinguished several localities which are recognised as the sites of antient Folcmotes. In the following account of Anglo-Saxon Councils it will be observed that several of them are expressly stated to have been held in the open air. From the Saxon charters, the mediaval chronicles, and the collection of Saxon laws, we obtain valuable, though not complete, information respecting the practice and procedure of county courts before the Norman era. This information is of essential importance in an investigation of the county suffrage at a later date. The Saxon institution not merely survived the Conquest, but, as will be hereafter seen, was continued, without any substantial alteration, to the Plantagenet times. Resort to the earlier authorities is, therefore, a matter, not of choice, but of necessity in the present investigation. They serve to demonstrate much that would otherwise be obscure in the practice of the shire court at the! later period, when its machinery was employed for the purpose of electing members of Parliament.

The celebrated Anglo-Saxon scholar Dr. Hickes,† who was Dean of Worcester in the last century, drew attention in his 'Dissertatio Epistolaris' to various remarkable documents illustrative of Saxon judicature. One of them relates to a county court held in the reign of Cnut at Egelnorth's stone, now Aylston, in Herefordshire, and commences to the following effect:

Here is made known in this writing that a shire moot sat at Ægelnorth's stone in the days of King Cnut. There sat Æthelstan bishop and Ranig ealdorman, and Eadwine the ealdorman's son and Leofwine Wulfige's son and Thurkil White; and Tofig Prud came there on the king's errand. And there were Bryning shire reeve and Egelweard at Frome and Leofrine at Frome and Godric at Stoke and all the thanes 'Glossarium in voce Mallobergium.'

*

† Georgii Hickesii S. T. P. de antiquæ literaturæ septentrionalis utilitate, sive de linguarum septentrionalium usu Dissertatio Epistolaris. Oxoniæ, 1703, fol.

This document is also given in Mr. Thorpe's 'Diplomatarium Anglicum Saxonici ævi.' London, 1865. 8vo. The translation in the text is that of Mr. Thorpe.

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in Herefordshire. Then came there to the moot Eadwine Eanwen's son and there raised a claim against his own mother to a portion of land namely at Wellington and Cradley. Then asked the bishop who would answer for his mother? Then answered Thurkil White and said that he would if the claim were known to him. As the claim was not known to him three thanes were selected from the moot [who should ride] to where she was and that was at Fauley.'*

This record goes on to give a curious account of the manner in which the land was ultimately adjudged to her kinswoman Leofloed, who was wife of Thurkil, and concludes thus:-Then Thurkil White stood up in the moot and prayed all the thanes to grant to his wife the lands which her kinswoman had given her. And they did so. And Thurkil then rode to Saint Æthelberht's monastery with the leave and witness of all the folk and caused it to be set in a Christ's book.'

Dr.

This document is valuable for the information which it gives respecting the constitution of the shire moot. The president is the bishop sitting with the ealdorman and the sheriff of the county. The great body of the members of the court who ultimately adjudicate the land to Thurkil's wife are the Thanes. This word is used in Saxon documents in various senses. Hickes translates it in this place liberi homines, freemen. If this translation be strictly correct, it follows that all persons of free condition were members of the county court sitting judici、ally. The material question of the rank of thanes will be noticed hereafter in connection with some other records of the time of Ethelstan. In the remarkable Saxon document entitled 'Rectitudines Singularum Personarum,'† thanes are described next before villani and apparently rank as the next superior class; and the taxes to which according to that document they are subject-the reparation of bridges and of fortified places, and assistance to repel invasions, in later times called the trinoda necessitas-are those to which all freemen would probably be required to contribute. But on the other hand, there are some passages in the 'Antient Laws' which favour the idea that a thane was a person somewhat above the lowest rank of freemen. The document entitled 'Ranks' states that if a ceorl or villanus throve so that he had five hides of his own land, and some other qualifications, he became thenceforth worthy of thane-right.' According to Mr.

A village five miles from Aylston. Hickes, ubi supra. + Antient Laws and Institutes of England,' p. 184.

‡ 'Antient Laws,' &c., p.

81.