Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/193

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1920 BARONY AND THANAQE 185 all the suits due from their land.^ There is, however, another sense in which the explanation of ' fine of coiirt ' as a fine in lieu of suit may be true. From Domesday we learn that those who had soc and sac, toll and team, and the king's custom of two pennies, could not have the earl's third penny save by the latter's own grant.^ Perhaps 'fine of court', 'fine of the county', ' wapentake fine ', ' sacfee ', was just a farm for the third penny due to the earl from the pleas arising in the courts of those who had soc, even the soc of a hallmoot, and therefore naturally included in the farm of the sheriff who did justice in the earl's stead.^ If so, this custom was literally a fine for having a court, and it was a fine in lieu of suit in the sense that it was a fee for the profits of justice that would have gone to the sheriff on the earl's behalf if the suit of the men attending that court had not been withdrawn from county and wapentake court. ' Cornage ' has long been the subject of controversy.* Accord- ing to the Red Book of the Exchequer, cornage, horngeld, or noutgeld was a talliage of 2d. a head on horned cattle,^ which Henry III wanted to levy throughout England in 1255 ; ^ but at the time of its first mention in the Pipe Roll of 1 130, it was a fixed ' custom ' due from each of the border shires,' which was paid in cattle till the end of the twelfth century, although accounted for at the exchequer in terms of money.* Always a ' forinsec ' service due to the king and never included in the sheriff's farm,®

  • e. g. Adam de Everingham held Everingham and Stanbury by doing suit by his

steward at all counties, trithings, and wapentakes and paying lis. 2d. de finibua [ibid. p. 194). * Domesday Book, i. 280 b.

  • It is noteworthy that at the end -of the twelfth century the wapentake fines of

Yorkshire amounted to about £40, the sum customarily given to earls in lieu of the third penny (Vict. County Hist., Yorkshire, ii. 151).

  • It has been discussed by Maitland in Northumbrian Tenures, ante, v. 626 ff. ;

by Mr. Roimd in The Commune of London, pp. 282 ff. ; by Mr. Lapsley in the Vict. County Hist., Durham, i. 273 ff. ; and by the Rev. J. Wilson, ibid. Cumberland, i. 313 ff. It is the view set forth in the last-named work that has been adopted by the present writer, who wishes to take this opportunity of acknowledging her great debt to Mr. Wilson.

  • Red Book, p. ccxlii. « Annals of Burton, p. 336.

' The amounts accounted for in the Pipe Rolls were substantial : in Cumberland, £85 8«. 8d., reduced by remissions to £80 10s. 8d. in 1158; in Westmorland, £55 195. 3d. ; in Northumberland, £20 ; and in Durham, £110 5s. 5d.

  • Vict. County Hist., Cuinberland, i. 315 ff. The sums paid by the tenants varied

very much; e.g. among the Cumberland barons the lord of Burgh owed 8s. 6d. (Bain, 1, no. 2566), the lord of Allerdale £15 13s. 4d. (Testa de Nevill, ii. 697) In the charter by which the abbot of St. Albans granted the lands of Archimorell to Earl Gospatric and his son, c. 1109, it was stipulated that Gospatric should pay £4 a year to the monks of Tynemouth — a priory of St. Albans — and to the abbot 20s. or 7 oxen each worth 3s. at his own option (Gesta Abbatum Monasterii 8. Albani, i. 72).

  • Gospatric, son of Orm, castellan of Appleby in 1174, made a grant of land to

Holmcultram : ' Ita quod faciemus pro monachis omne f orense et terrenum servicium, quodcumque ad Dominum Regem pertinet, scilicet de rioutgeld et endemot, et siquid aliud pertinet ad eius servicium, et quodcumque servicium pertinet ad Dominum de Allredale, scilicet de sewake et de placitis et de auxilio et de omni aliena (leg.