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1921 A BUTLER'S SERJEANTY 49 ' debet habere suas liberationes quando servit ' * savours directly of the Constitutio. In the Testa de Nevill are two returns for the great royal manor of Writtle, Essex, made for the Inquest, as I reckon, of 1212. One is made by Writtle jurors, and the other comprises the whole county. I give them here side by side. Writtle Essex Quedam terra in Borham, quam Willelmus de Kiveli tenuit in Willelmus de Kiveli tenuit et dimisit Borham dim. car. terre, quam rex illam episcopo London' Willelmo de Henricus dedit Hugoni de Kiveli, Sancte Marie ecclesia [1198-1221], set nescitur per quod servicium, et et predictus episcopus dimisit earn solet pertinere, ut dicit, ad mane- Kogero filio Alani; pertinet ad rium de Writele. Et Willelmus manerium de Writele et quod solet de Kiveli dimisit illam episcopo reddere per annum ad curiam de London' pro j marc' per annum illi Writele xxs. (p. 270 b). reddend'. Et episcopus dimisit illamKogero filio Alani, &c. (p. 269 a). The William of these returns is clearly identical with the William who, we have seen, paid forty marks on his succession to the office, in 1200. 2 The Hugh de Kiveli here named as his predecessor must be the Hugh named on the Pipe Roll of 1172. An earlier Hugh had held the office under Henry I, for the Pipe Roll of 1130 shows us Robert Fitz Siward paying in that year 15 marks for his office and his widow. 3 Although the entries cited by Madox all relate to Essex, the family seems to be ignored in Morant's history of the county. The office may have been held, as lawyers say, * in gross ' ; for I have not found it mentioned in England as held with certain land. Some years after the survey of 1212 we find the earl of Arundel holding Little Waltham (Essex) with the wardship of William de ' Kyvilby ' and owing for it butler service (seriantiam pincerne) to the king, 4 but I doubt if the two were connected. In a foot-note under Little Waltham Morant has printed a charter, then (1768) in private hands, by which William ' de Chively ', son and heir of William ' de Chevelli ', gave the church of that parish to the priory of Hatfield Peverel as his father had given it. The legend on the seal of this charter, he states, was ' Sigillum Will[elm]i Cheveli Pin- cerna [sic] Regis '. As Ralf ' de Alta Ripa ', archdeacon of Colchester, was a witness, the charter must belong to the close of Henry II's reign. We find mention, moreover, of William, in 1205, in another 1 Quoted above from the register of Philip Augustus. 2 He must also be the William whom Madox cites, from the Pipe Roll of 4 John under Essex, as paying that his wife, then in prison, might be released on the guarantee of lawful Essex knights that they would produce her if she should be impleaded. 3 See Madox, Exchequer (ed. 1711), p. 316 * Testa, p. 267. VOL. XXXVI. — NO. CXLI. E