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contain a great deal of curious matter besides the mere records of admission to benefices, but with this I am at present not concerned.

II. I come now to the court rolls, which throw much more light upon our parochial history than any other documents that have come down to us; their information is concerned exclusively with the civil, domestic, sometimes with the political life of our forefathers; about their religious life, or their contentions with ecclesiastics, they have rarely a word to say.

patron was willing to exercise his right in | also of such as were occasioned by the
favor of any one, rather than not exercise death of all abbots, or priors, or abbesses,
it at all; the candidate for the living knew who presided over that large number of
that it was a case of now or never; the religious houses not exempt from episco-
bishop had nothing to gain, and some- pal jurisdiction. It is obvious that these
thing to fear, from asking too many ques- records constitute an invaluable body of
tions; and there is some reason to think evidence, from which important informa
that the parishioners had more voice in tion may be drawn regarding our paro-
the matter than they have now. That chial and ecclesiastical history. The in-
followed which was likely to follow, namestitution books, as might be expected,
ly, that the institutions to vacant benefices
were made as a rule within a very few
weeks, or even days, after the death of an
incumbent. A man who had got his nom-
ination lost no time in presenting himself
to the bishop. There was no widow or
family of his predecessor to consider; and
for every reason the sooner the new man
got into the parsonage the better for all
parties concerned. Moreover, to guard
against all chances of a disputed claim,
the bishops' registers of institution were
kept with the most scrupulous care, and
while enormous masses of ecclesiastical
records in every diocese in England have
Mr. Cadaverous laid it down the other
perished, the institution books have been day as a position not to be gainsaid,
preserved with extraordinary fidelity, have that "everybody knows what manor court
survived all the troubles and wars and rolls are; therefore, to stoop to the igno-
spoliation that have gone on, and, speak-rance of the few, and to assume ignorance
ing within certain limits, have been pre- on the part of the many, is unworthy of
served for five hundred years from one the enlightened scholar, his mission being
end of England to the other. It is no to increase the sum of knowledge by ad-
exaggeration to say that there are hun- dressing himself to the advanced guard
dreds of parishes in England of whose in the army of progress!"
incumbents for centuries not only a com-
plete list may be made out, but the very
day and place be set down where those
incumbents received institution into the
benefice either at the hands of the dio-
cesan or his official. This is certainly

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Oh, Mr. Cadaverous, Mr. Cadaverous ! It is a humiliating confession, which we the weak men of the earth are compelled to make, that we find ourselves learning most from those who assume that we know least. So a few words for such as are not ashamed to admit that omniscence is not their forte, whatever may be their foible.

Mr. Cadaverous is nothing if he is not sententious. It does by no means follow that he is always intelligible. What he meant to say was that everybody knows all about courts baron, and courts leet, and manor court rolls, and such like simthe case in the great East Anglian dio-ple matters; and that it would be sheer cese of Norwich, which comprehended, in waste of time to explain such rudiments the fourteenth century, the counties of to people in an enlightened age. Norfolk and Suffolk and a portion of Cambridgeshire. We may safely say that we are able to tell approximately within a few weeks or days when any living fell vacant during the period under review, who succeeded, and who the patron was who presented to the cure. Nor is this true only of the secular or parochial clergy. Jealous as the religious houses were of their rights and privileges, the heads of monasteries, as a rule, were compelled to receive institution too at the hands of the bishops of the see in which they were situated. They too presented themselves to their diocesan that their elections might be formally recognized; and thus the institution books contain not only the records of the various changes in the incumbency of the secular clergy, but

In the thirteenth century it may be said that in theory the land of England belonged to the sovereign. The sovereign had indeed assigned large tracts of territory to A or B or C; but under certain circumstances, of no very unfrequent occurrence, these tracts of territory came back into the hands of the sovereign, and were re-granted by him at his will to whom

B or C were bound to perform certain services in recognition of the fact that they were tenants of the king; and by virtue of such services the equivalents of what we now understand by rentthey were called tenants in chief, or tenants in capite.

The tracts of territory held by A or B or C were in almost every case made up of lands scattered about over all parts of the kingdom. The tenant in chief had his castle or capital mansion,* which was supposed to be his abode; but as far as the larger portion - immensely the larger portion of his possessions was concerned, he was necessarily a non-resident landlord, getting what he could out of them either by farming them through the agency of a bailiff, or letting out his estates to be held under himself in precisely the same way as he held his fief, or original grant from the king.

he chose. In return for such grants, A or | each of them administered on the model of the larger fiefs originally granted to the tenants in capite. There was a capital mansion in which the lord resided, or was supposed to reside, and sub-tenants holding their land under the lord, and paying to him periodically certain small money rents and rendering him certain services. The estate comprehended the capital mansion with its appurtenances and the domain lands in the lord's occupation, the common lands over which the tenants had certain common rights, and the lands in the occupation of the tenants, which they farmed with more or less freedom for their own behoof, the whole constituting a manor whose owner was the lord. At certain intervals the tenants were bound to appear before their lord and give account of themselves; bound, that is, to show cause why they had not performed their services; bound to pay their quit rents, whether in money or kind; bound to go through a great deal of queer business; but above all, as far as our present purpose is concerned, to do fealty to the lord of the manor in every case where the small patches of land had changed hands, and pay a fine for entering upon land ac quired by the various forms of alienation or by inheritance. In some manors, if a tenant died the lord laid claim to some of his live stock as a heriot, which was forthwith seized by the bailiff of the manor; and in all manors, if a man died without heirs, his land escheated to the lord of the manor; that is, it came back to the lord who in theory was the owner of the soil.

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In theory the tenant in chief could not sell his land; he could sublet it to a mesne tenant, who stood to himself precisely in the same relation as he the tenant in capite stood to the sovereign, the mesne tenant in his turn being bound to render certain services to his over lord, and liable to forfeit his lease for in theory it was that if certain contingencies happened. It was inevitable that, as time went by, the mesne tenant should regard his estate as his own, and that the same necessities which compelled the tenant in capite to relax his hold over an outlying landed estate would compel the mesne tenant to follow his example. The process went These periodical meetings at which all on till it was becoming a serious difficulty this business and a great deal else was to discover how the king was to get his transacted were called the courts of the services from the tenant in capite, who manor, and the records of these courts had practically got rid of two-thirds of his were kept with exceeding and most jealfief, and how he again was to get his ser ous scrupulousness; they were invariably vices from the mesne tenant, who had drawn up in Latin, according to a strictly parted with two-thirds of his estate to half-legal form, and were inscribed on long a-dozen under-tenants; until, when the king's scutage had to be levied, there was no telling who was liable for it, or how it should be apportioned.

It was to meet this difficulty, and to check the prevailing sub-division of land -sub-infeudation men called it then that the statute of Quia Emptores was passed in the eighteenth year of Edward the First. [A D. 1290.] The result of all the sub-division that had been going on had been that the number of what we now call landed estates had largely increased,

* Experts will object to the use of this term and for experts.

other terms as not strictly accurate. I am not writing

rolls of parchment, and are known as
manor court rolls. This is not the time
to say much more about the court rolls.
They are not very easy reading - they
require a somewhat long apprenticeship
before they can be readily deciphered;
but when you have once become familiar
with them, they afford some very curious
and unexpected information from time to
time, though it must be allowed that you
have to do a good deal of digging for
every nugget that turns up.

Observe, however, this: that it is not
far from the truth to say that in East
Anglia - for I will not travel out of my
own province- every tiller of the soil

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who occupied a plot of land, however | sors; and, taking one year with another, small, was sure to be a tenant under some it is fair to say that within any diocese the lord of the manor; when he died a record larger the number of institutions recorded of his death was entered upon the court rolls of the manor; the name of his successor was inscribed; the amount of fine set down which his heir paid for entering upon his inheritance; and if he died without heirs the fact was noticed, the lands which he had held being forfeited, or escheating, as it was called, to the lord.

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Taken together, then, we have in the diocesan institution books on the one hand, and in the court rolls on the other, two sources of information which as far as they go- furnish us with a mass of evidence absolutely irrefragable with regard to the mortality of clergy and laity at any period during the fourteenth century. I say 66 as far as they go," for it might happen that a country benefice- and still more frequently that a town benefice. had been so cruelly pillaged by a religious house, that little or nothing remained to support the wretched parson, and that no one could be found who would accept the cure. Then the cure would remain vacant for years. Where this happened, the death of the previous incumbent would not appear on the records for years after it had occurred, nor would any notice be taken of the long vacancy when the next parson was instituted. In a period of dreadful mortality, if the parsons died off in large numbers, it would be inevitable that the impoverished livings would "go a begging." It might be difficult to get the most valuable pieces of preferment filled it would be impossible to fill such as could not offer a bare maintenance. Hence the institution books can only be accepted as giving a part of the evidence with regard to the clerical mortality. However startling the number of deaths of clergy within a certain area during a given period may appear to be, they certainly will not represent the whole number - only the number of such incumbents as were forthwith replaced by their succes

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in a given time, the more incomplete will be the record of the deaths among the clergy during that time. When there are more men than places the places are soon filled. When there are more places than men there must needs be vacancies square holes and round ones.

So much for the institution books. With regard to the court rolls, there the evidence is even much less exhaustive; for here we have the registers of the deaths of the landholders within the manor, great and small — i.e. of the heads of families; but, except in rare instances, we have no notice of any other member of the household, or of what happened to them. A man's whole household may have been swept off-young and old, babe and suckling, sister and brother, and aged mother, and wife, and children, and servant, and friend every soul of them involved in one hideous, horrible calamity. The steward of the manor was not concerned with any but the head of the house-the tenant of the manor. Was he missing? Then, who was his heir? Any sons? Dead of the plague! Brothers? Dead of the plague! Wife? Dead of the plague! Children? Kinsfolk? All gone! Their blackening carcasses huddled in sweltering masses of putrefaction in the wretched hovels, while the pitiless July sun blazed overhead; "calmer than clock-work, and not caring The steward made his entry of one fact only. Thus:

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The jurors do present that Simon Must died seized of a messuage and four acres of land in Stradset, and that he has no heir. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord.

Also that Matilda Stile- was she married or single, widow or mother or maid? What cared the precise man of business on that 24th of July, 1349, as his pen moved over the parchment? - Matilda Stile died seized of one acre and one rood of land held in villenage. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord until such time as the heir may appear in court.

He never did appear! Next year her little estate was handed over to another. She was the last of her line.

Such entries as these swarm in the court rolls of this year 1349. They tell their own tale. But it is obvious that their tale is incomplete, and that we must

clerk who up to this time had kept the rolls so neatly, and who could not be easily replaced for more than a year after he fell a victim to the plague?

Indeed, the inquirer who is desirous of pursuing researches in this field must be prepared for frequent disappointment just at the moment when he thinks he has made a "find." The court rolls for this particular year are comparatively scarce, and this is true not only for East Anglia, but for the whole of England, as any one may see who will only cast his eye down those pages of the deputy-keeper's Forty: third Annual Report, which are concerned with the records of the Duchy of Lancaster. These registers of deaths are, as I have before said, only complete as far as they go.

form our own conclusions from the num- Nothing else is recorded. At another ber of the deaths recorded as to the prob- manor of Lord Townshend's, Raynham able number of those whose names have Parva, between the years 1347 and 1350 been quite passed over. Sometimes, too, no court seems to have been held, though these rolls are eloquent in their silence. the lord of the manor, Thomas de InWhen country parsons were dying by galdesthorp, had died in the interval. scores and hundreds, and the tillers of The scourge of the plague had been so the soil by thousands and tens of thou- awful in its incidence that when the next sands, it could not but be that the lords court was held on the 24th July, 1350, of manors and their stewards died also. fourteen men and four women (holders of Yes! they, too, were struck down. In land, be it remembered) are named as bavone instance that I have met with, the ing died off, not one of whom had left a first half of the entries of the business living representative behind them. In all carried on at one of these courts in the cases their little holdings had escheated summer of this year is written in the ordi- to the lord. Amongst them was one nary court hand of the time, and the rest" John Taleour, clericus." Was he the is rudely scrawled by some one whose hand is not yet formed; it looks like the writing of a lad apprenticed to the scrivener's business. Was the steward of the manor actually smitten by the plague as he was holding the court a subordinate taking his place and awkwardly finishing the work which his master's glazed eye perhaps never rested on? Again and again I have found that a series of court rolls of an important Norfolk manor is perfect for the first twenty-two years of Edward III., and no record remains for the next year or two. Then they begin once more, and have been preserved with unbroken regularity. At Raynham, in a parish of about fourteen hundred acres, there were three small manors. The courts of one of them were held three times in the year 1348. Upon the same parchment, and immediately following the records of the previous year, come some scarcely legible notes of a court held in 1349, the precise day of the month omitted, the entries scrawled informally by a scribe who not only did not know the forms of the court, but who was evidently not a professional writer. He bungled so that he seems actually to have given up his task. The next court of the manor was not held till three years had gone by. At Hellhoughton, a manor now belonging to the Marquis of Townshend, where two courts were held annually, the series of rolls for the first twenty-two years of Edward the Third is complete. Then comes one which scarcely deserves to be called a court roll, so entirely informal is it, and so evidently drawn up by some one who did not know his business, and who did not pretend to know it. It is little more than a collection of rough memoranda of deaths. Twelve of the suitors of the court had died without heirs; seven others had come to do fealty to the lord as successors to those whose heirs they presumably were.

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Let us now return to the point at which the king's letter of prorogation left us on the 10th of March, 1349. At that time it is certain that the pestilence was raging fiercely in London and Westminster, and almost as certain that it had abated in Avignon and other towns in France. Two or three days after this date the Bishop of Norwich crossed the Channel, leaving his diocese in the hands of his officials. Had the plague broken out with any severity in East Anglia? I think it almost demonstrable that it had not. A day or two before the bishop left London he instituted his friend Stephen de Cressingham to the deanery of Cranwich-in the west of Norfolk - which had fallen vacant, but there is nothing to show that the vacancy was due to anything out of the common. During the year ending 25th of March, 1349, there were 80 institutions all told, as against 92 in the year 1347. The average number of institutions for the five years ending 25th of March, 1349, was 77. Between this date and the end of the month there were four institutions

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East Anglia had not long to wait. In the valley of the Stour, a mile or two from Sudbury, where the stream serves as the boundary between Suffolk and Essex, the ancestors of Lord Walsingham had two manors in the township of Little Cornard the one was called Caxtons, the other was the manor of Cornard Parva. At this latter manor a court was held on the 31st of March the number of tenants of the manor can at no time have exceeded fifty - yet at this court six women and three men are registered as having died since the last court was held, two months before.

only that is, there was nothing abnor- | is almost unbroken for the reign of Ed-
mal in the condition of the diocese.
ward the Third. During the years 1346,
1347, and 1348, ten, six, and nine deaths
are registered respectively. The courts
were held every two months. In Decem-
ber, 1348, there is no death recorded; in
February, 1349, again there is none. On
the 28th of April a dispute was set down
for hearing to be adjudicated upon by the
steward and a jury of the homage. It
was a dispute between a husband and
wife on a question of dower. The man's
name was Reginald Goscelin; his wife's
name was Emma. The dispute was never
settled. Before the day of hearing came
on, every one of Emma Goscelin's wit-
nesses was dead, and her husband was
dead too. Four other landowners had
died. One of these latter had a son and
heir to succeed, but two months later the
boy had gone, and the sole representative
of the family was a little girl, who became
straightway the ward of the lord of the
manor.

This is the earliest instance I have yet met with of the appearance of the plague among us, and as it is the earliest, so does it appear to have been one of the most frightful visitations from which any town or village in Suffolk or Norfolk suffered during the time the pestilence lasted. On the 1st of May another court was held; fifteen more deaths are recorded thirteen men and two women, seven of them without heirs. On the 3rd of November, apparently when the panic abated, again the court met. In the six months that had passed thirty-six more deaths had occurred, and thirteen more households had been left without a living soul to represent them. In this little community, in six months' time, twenty-one families had been absolutely obliterated men, women, and children- and of the rest it is difficult to see how there can have been a single house in which there was not one dead. Meanwhile, some time in September, the parson of the parish had fallen a victim to the scourge, and on the 2nd of October another was instituted in his room. Who reaped the harvest? The tithe sheaf too - how was it garnered in the barn? And the poor kine at milking-time? Hush! Let us pass on.

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Little Cornard lies almost at the extreme south of the county of Suffolk. At the extreme north of Norfolk, occupying the elbow of the coast, having the Wash on the west and the German Ocean on the north, lies the deanery of Heacham, a district in which the Le Stranges have for at least seven centuries exercised their beneficent influence. Heacham itself is a large township extending over some forty-nine hundred acres. The manorial rights appear to have extended over the whole parish. The series of court rolls VOL. XLIX. 2511

LIVING AGE.

Contiguous to the township of Heacham lies Hunstanton-not the pleasant little watering-place which the million will persist in calling by that name, though scarcely forty years ago the maker and builder of the modern town, the man who marked out its streets and planned its roads, and foresaw its future before a brick of the place was laid, gave it the name of St. Edmunds - Hunstanton, I say, in the fourteenth century was a parish less than half the size of Heacham, and probably much farther from the sea than it is now. When on the 20th of March, 1349, the steward of the manor of Hunstanton held his court there he entered the name of only one old woman who had died within the last month that is, up to the 20th of March the plague had not yet appeared. Five weeks after this, on the 23rd of April, the next court was held. Five petty disputes had been entered for hearing. Sixteen men were engaged in them as principals or wit neses. When the day came eleven of the sixteen were dead. On the 22nd of May again there was a court, and again three suits for debt were set down. The defendant in one case, the plaintiff in a second, both plaintiff and defendant in the third, died before the court day arrived. In June no court was held -was there a panic? Except in this month and in September the meetings were carried on as regularly as if it had all been done by machinery. In September things got to their worst, and in this month the parson died, and was speedily succeeded by

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