tree. She had the right of using the kitchen so many days a week, or of threshing in the heir's barn when she had occasion. She held a part of the cowhouses, stables, and outbuildings. When she married again, as sometimes happened, this division of house property, or house room, must have been inconvenient both for the heir and the new husband. It is upon these re-marriages that the homagers of the manor are called upon to declare the ancient custom.[1] As the years go on the rolls of the manor are less carefully kept. The old order is dying out. No longer does the steward's clerk copy out the minutes in a beautiful handwriting. There is no steward at all towards the last, but the villagers—or villeins—themselves keep the record, and strive to maintain the customs of their fathers.
For the genealogist these rolls are, it need hardly be said, most useful. They have supplied this glossary with a considerable number of words, sentences illustrating words, and local names, and I have extracted in that way some notices of ancient and very curious customs.
Upon the death of a farmer or yeoman it was, until recent years, the custom in this district for the widow to occupy a distinctly separated portion of her late husband's house. In one case in Norton the widow, an old woman, spent her time in spinning. The room which she occupied, and in which was her bed, hung with homespun linen in blue and white 'checks' or squares. When she was tired of spinning she sat near the fire and smoked her pipe. The spun thread was woven in the adjacent village of Dronfield. In old Derbyshire wills I have several times noticed directions as to the room or rooms in the testator's house which the widow was to occupy. Thus in the will, dated 8th June, 1719, of William Greaves of Rowlee, near Ashopton, yeoman, the testator desires his wife to have the use of all rooms 'below the neither flore of the north side of the house' during her life. It may be mentioned that this will is sealed with a fine impression of the arms of Greaves of Beeley surmounted by a helmet. Probably the testator was the descendant
- ↑ See the word Dower in the Addenda.
