Manorial Laws and Curiosities of Tenures.
No doubt because of the proximity of the district to the Border, the tenures by which certain properties were held in Cumberland and Westmorland must be regarded as quite local in their character. The observances are, of course, all the more interesting on that account, and even in cases for which parallels are to be found in other parts of the kingdom, little peculiarities may sometimes be seen in local instances which throw light on the former habits of the people. Lords of manors were once individuals possessed of great powers. The lords of Millom held their property for hundreds of years, and had jura regalia within the seignory, in memory of which a modern stone erected at Gallow, half a mile below Millom Castle, has the inscription,
“Here the Lords of Millom exercised jura regalia.”
The lord of the manor of Troutbeck, Windermere, is also believed to have formerly exercised a jurisdiction over capital offences.
Where such powers existed, it is by no means surprising that the homage exacted from tenants and servitors on various occasions was of a character that in modern days would be regarded as extremely degrading. Thus when a free tenant went to his lord’s residence to do homage according to custom and duty, he was ushered into the presence of his superior without sword or other arms, and with his head uncovered. The lord remained seated, and the tenant with profound reverence knelt before the great man. With his clasped or joined hands placed between those of the lord, the homager repeated the following vow, which seems to have been in practically the same terms in various manors:—“I become your man from this day forward, for life, for member, and for worldly honour, and unto you shall be true and faithful, and bear you faith for the lands that I hold of you, saving the faith that I owe to our Sovereign Lord the King.” The lord, still sitting, then kissed the tenant, as a token of his approbation. In Cumberland and Westmorland there are several villages named Carleton, this being one of the reminders of the days of serfdom. The carls were simply the basest sort of servants—practically slaves.
The former servile condition of the poor in the neighbourhood of barons’ houses is also preserved in such names as Bongate, or as it was always written in old documents, Bondgate, at Appleby. In the great trial between the Cliffords and the burghers, when the former claimed the services of the freemen, it was decided that neither Robert de Vetripont nor any of his heirs ever had seizin of the borough, where the burgesses lived, but that King John gave to him “Vetus Apilbi ubi villani manent”—“Old Appleby, where the bondmen dwell.” The bondmen, or villeins, were probably of the same social standing as those known as drenges, the Cliffords having very many drengage tenements in various parts of their Sheriffwick. “The drenges were pure villeins—doubtless Saxons kept in a state of the vilest slavery, being granted by the lords of the manor, with a piece of land, like so many oxen. In fact they were as much the property of the lord of the manor as the negroes in the West Indian Colonies were formerly the property of the sugar planters. It is probable that the drenges were employed to perform all the servile and laborious offices at Brougham Castle; for in 1359, Engayne, lord of Clifton, granted to Roger de Clifford, by indenture, the service of John Richardson, and several others mentioned by name, with their bodies and all that belonged to them.”[8]
In the reign of Richard the First there was given to the church of Carlisle, “lands in Lorton, with a mill there, and all its rights and appendages, and namely the miller, his wife, and children”—apparently clear evidence of the servitors being regarded as part of the property.
Several manorial lords claimed for their tenants the right to go toll-free throughout England. This was the case with Armathwaite, while the privilege also pertained to the prioress and nuns at Nunnery. The manor of Acorn Bank, near Temple Sowerby, used to have the right, or rather the privilege was claimed. In the time of the late Mr. John Boazman (the immediate predecessor of Mr. Henry Boazman, the present owner), the following was written:—“The lords of this manor can still claim and exercise for themselves and tenants all the privileges granted to the Knights Templars, the most important of which is exemption from toll throughout England. The tenants when travelling carry a certificate, signed and sealed by the lord of the manor. This certificate, after reciting part of the old charter, concludes as follows:—‘Which charter [that of Henry the Second] was confirmed by King Charles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, in the fourth year of his reign, in witness whereof I, the said John Boazman, as lord of the manor, have executed and set my manorial seal.’” The burgesses of Appleby also possessed under their early charters privileges of a like character, and these would doubtless be of very appreciable value.
The ancient family of Hoton, or Hutton, were by Edward the Third, in consideration of the service rendered to him by Thomas de Hoton in the wars against Scotland, restored to the bailiwick and office of keeping the King’s land or forest in Plumpton, which was first bestowed upon them prior to the time of Edward the First. It is believed that this led to the family taking a horn as their badge. Besides the monetary payment of something under £2 yearly, it was found in the reign of Henry the Seventh that the lands were also held by the service of holding the stirrup of the King’s saddle while his Majesty mounted his horse in the Castle of Carlisle. The adjoining manor of Newton Reigny was held in the early days of the Lowthers by the service of finding for the King in his wars against Scotland one horseman with a horse of the value of forty shillings, armed with a coat of mail, an iron helmet, a lance, and a sword, abiding in the war for forty days with the King’s person. At a later date the terms were varied; there was then the paying of two shillings per annum for cornage, and the providing, for the King’s army, “one horseman with habiliments, one lance, and one long sword.” Penrith and five other manors were once held by the Kings of Scotland by paying one soar-hawk yearly to the constable of the Castle of Carlisle, with some privileges concerning rights in Inglewood Forest. The manor of Cargo, near Carlisle, was held for many generations by the family of de Ross, by the rendering of a hawk or a mark of silver yearly. When the same manor was the property of the Lacys, it was held by cornage, and afterwards by the Vescys for a mew’d hawk yearly in lieu of all services.
In the manor of Gaitsgill and Raughton were twenty-two freehold tenants in 1777, who paid 28s. 8¾d. yearly free rent, did suit and service at the lord’s court when called upon, and paid yearly to the Duke of Portland as chief lord of the Forest of Inglewood £2 13s. 2d., besides sending a man to appear for them at the Forest Court at Hesket every St. Barnabas’s Day, and that representative was to be on the inquest. This manor was at the Conquest “all forest and waste ground,” and was enclosed by one Ughtred, who held of the King “for keeping the eyries of hawks which bred in the Forest of Inglewood.” The posterity of Ughtred took their surname from Gatesgill, and adopted the sparhawk for their cognisance. The neighbouring manor of High Head (Higheved) was held of Edward the Third by William English by the service of one rose yearly. Later, in the time of Henry the Eighth, it was held by William Restwold as an approvement of the forest by fealty and the service of rendering at the King’s exchequer of Carlisle one red rose yearly at the feast of St. John the Baptist.
In the reign of Philip and Mary, Alexander Armstrong was granted a considerable amount of property, including a mill, in the parish of Gilcrux, at a very low rental, on condition of finding and maintaining five horsemen “ready and well-furnished, whenever the King and Queen and the successors of the Queen shall summon them within the county.” In documents belonging to the abbey of Holme Cultram, whereby Flemingby (now known as Flimby, between Maryport and Workington) was handed over to the monks, Gospatric, the donor, inserted a clause that he would himself do for the monastery “noutegeld and the like due to the King; and also to the lord of Allerdale of seawake, castleward, pleas, aids, and other services.” The nutgeld tax—an impost apparently peculiar to the Border counties—was even last century frequently enforced in Cumberland and Westmorland.
The custom of providing for gilt spurs was of a practical kind, the articles being peculiarly useful to the grantor. “Every knight (who served on horseback) was obliged to wear gilt spurs; hence they were called equites aurati.” The reservation, by Gospatrick, of homage to be performed by William de Lancastre has provided some interesting questions for past generations of historians and antiquaries. William de Lancastre the second gave thirty marks to the King that he might have the privilege of fighting a duel with Gospatrick, and the theory propounded was that this contest was caused because “the tenant’s proud spirit could not brook such a humiliation as that of doing homage.” Remembering the conditions of life, the supposition is not at all improbable, for what man of good birth would care to submit to perform the service described in the second paragraph of this chapter? In the same parish of Kirkby Lonsdale, William de Pickering had the manor of Killington granted to him for the yearly payment of a pair of gilt spurs, or sixpence, at the feast of Pentecost, and the service of the twentieth part of one knight’s service when occasion should require.
Alice Lucy, a member of the once very powerful family of that name, reserved out of Wythop a penny rent service, or a pair of gloves; and a long time afterwards it was found that Sir John Lowther, knight, held the same manor “by homage, fealty, and suit of court at Cockermouth ... and the free rent of one penny or one red rose.” The manor, now held by Sir Henry R. Vane, Bart., Hutton-in-the-Forest, was subsequently sold to the Fletchers under the services just mentioned. In addition to a heavy fine, and a rental of £10 yearly, Thomas de Multon paid “one palfrey for the office of forester of Cumberland,” granted to the family by King John. One of Multon’s ancestors, Richard de Lucy, also gave money and a palfrey in order to obtain the grant and other privileges.
At Hesket, yearly, on St. Barnabas’s Day, by the highway side under a thorn tree (according to the very ancient manner of holding assemblies in the open air), wrote Nicolson in 1777, was kept the Court for the whole forest of Inglewood, to which Court the manors within that vast circumference (above twenty in number), owed suit and service; and a jury was there impannelled and sworn for the whole forest. It is a shadow or relic of the ancient Forest Courts; and here they pay their compositions for improvements, purprestures, agistments, and puture of the foresters, and the jurors being obliged to attend from the several manors, seems to be part of that service which was called witnesman. “Improvements” in this case means permission to take up open lands belonging to the manorial lord.
Horn tenures, locally known as cornage, were common. At Brougham Hall is preserved the old and quaintly fashioned horn which was sounded by the former owners of the estates in complying with the requirement to blow a horn in the van of the King and his army, when the monarch went into Scotland, or at other times when the Scots made incursions to the southern side of the Border. An interesting relic of the same description is possessed at Carlisle—the “Horn of the Altar.” The Charter Horn has thus been described by Archdeacon Prescott:—“In the year 1290 a claim was made by the King, Edward the First, and by others, to the tithes on certain lands lately brought under cultivation in the Forest of Inglewood. The Prior of Carlisle appeared on behalf of his convent, and urged their right to the property on the ground that the tithes had been granted to them by a former King, who had enfeoffed them by a certain ivory horn which he gave to the Church of Carlisle, and which they possessed at that time. The Cathedral of Carlisle has had in its possession for a great number of years, two fine walrus tusks, with a portion of the skull. They appear in ancient inventories of the goods of the cathedral as ‘one horn of the altar in two parts,’ or ‘two horns of the altar’ (1674), together with other articles of the altar furniture. But antiquaries came to the conclusion that these were identical with the ‘ivory horn’ referred to above.... Such Charter Horns were not uncommon in ancient days.”
Blackmail used to bear a significance not fully understood by the modern use of the word. In the north of England it signified, especially in Cumberland, a certain rent of money, corn, or other things, anciently paid to persons inhabiting upon or near the Border, being men of name and power, allied with certain robbers within those counties, to be freed and protected from the devastations of those depredators. By 43 Elizabeth, cap. 13, it was provided that to take any such money or contribution, called blackmail, to secure goods from rapine, was made capital felony, as well as the offences such contribution was meant to guard against. Tenants in those old times had nearly all the privileges of paying; their opportunities for getting anything without cash or labour were few. One such concession which they enjoyed was “plowbote,” being the right of tenants to take wood to repair their ploughs, carts, and harrows; and for the making of such articles of husbandry as rakes and forks. Fire-bote was the term applied to a right enjoyed by many tenants, being the fuel for firing, and obtainable out of the lands granted to them. Timber-lode was a service by which tenants were to carry to the lord’s house timber felled in his woods. The Dean and Chapter of Carlisle were formerly obliged to provide the tenants of the manor of Morland with wood for the reparation of their houses. This was released by an endowment of £16 per annum, being given by the Dean and Chapter to the school.
Boon services of all kinds were common in all the manors along what is known as the eastern fell side—the base of Cross Fell, and north and south thereof. Before they were enfranchised by Sir Michael le Fleming, the tenants of Skirwith had to supply such boons as reaping, mowing, ploughing, harrowing, carrying coals, and spinning a stipulated number of hanks of yarn. Up to the latter half of last century each tenant of the manor of Threlkeld was obliged to find half a draught for one day’s ploughing; give one day mowing, one day shearing, one day clipping, and one day salving sheep; one carriage load once in two years, but not to go above ten miles; and to dig and lead two loads of peats every year, the tenants to have sufficient meat and drink when they performed these services. The cottagers were to perform the same services, only instead of half a plough they were to find one horse with a harrow, and a footman instead of a carriage load. The tenants were also bound to the lord’s mill, pay the fortieth corn, and to maintain the wall and thatch of the mill. The tenants had house-boot (wood for repairing their houses) as set out by the lord’s bailiff; peats, turves, ling, whins, limestone, and marl, with stones and slate for building. About 1764, half the tenants bought off these services at a cost of five guineas each, the mill service only excepted. The tenements paid twopence each yearly as greenhue rent, an impost which was once a common payment by Cumberland and Westmorland manorial tenants; along with it in the Eskdale and Mitredale manors of the Earls of Egremont was a due called “door-toll.” What may have been the origin of the latter seems to be now unknown.
At Parsonby, near Aspatria, the tenants had to give to the parson each one boon day yearly at reaping. In the neighbouring parish of Blennerhasset the tenants, besides being subjected to heriots, each provided one day at mowing, shearing, ploughing, and meadows dressing, and two days leading coals. Higher up the fells the score of tenants at High Ireby and Ruthwaite, under Mr. Fletcher, had to give one day a year, or pay threepence; one would suppose the most economical alternative was to pay cash. At Egremont the burgesses who had ploughs were obliged to till the lord’s demesne one day in the year, but every burgess was required to find a reaper. In one of the manors of the parish of Wetheral, the tenants, in addition to their monetary payments, had to render to the Aglionby family, of Nunnery, boon days shearing and leading corn, with a certain quantity of oats called foster oats, six pecks being equal to four of Carlisle measure. Various attempts have been made within recent years to ascertain definitely what was the origin and meaning of the term. Nicolson says it was “perhaps heretofore for the use of the foresters, this part being within the forest of Inglewood.” That this was probable is also shown by a rule which existed in the barony of Greystoke, which was held of the King in capite by the service of one entire barony, rendering £4 yearly at the fairs of Carlisle, suit at the County Court monthly, and serving the King in person against Scotland. The lord’s tenants, of whom there were some hundreds early in this century, had to pay “a 20d. fine on the death of lord or tenant, and a 30d. fine upon alienation; also to pay foster rents, foster corn, mill rents, greenhue, peat silver, and boons for mowing and leading peats.”
There are many curious regulations bearing upon local tenures, but there is not lacking evidence that some of a still more noteworthy character have either been allowed to drop out of recognition, or the duties have been compounded for. Silver-penny fines are still enforced occasionally. In Mr. J. E. Hasell’s manor of Dacre, when a mortgagee of real estate is admitted to the court roll, he has to pay a fine of a silver penny for each. Heriots is a manorial impost about which some curious information has at various times been published. Many lords of manors and landlords have during the last half century allowed many of their rights in this direction to drop, while others have put on small money payments in lieu both of heriots and services. All customary property in the barony of Greystoke, except in the manor of Watermillock, is subject to heriots.
A curious custom obtains in Mr. H. C. Howard’s manor of Newbiggin (Dacre), as shown by a case which arose about thirty years ago. A married woman, seized in fee of customary lands, died, leaving a husband and child. The query was raised whether the husband was entitled to the estate for his own life “as tenant by the curtesy.” It was decided that by the custom of the manor, there being no will, the child or heir at law of a deceased married woman should take the property absolutely, to the exclusion of the husband. In the adjoining manor of Barton there is another interesting rule. A Pooley Bridge man, who held certain property of the manor by payment of a rent of a shilling per annum, died intestate and a bachelor. His nearest relatives were two nieces, daughters of a deceased brother. The question was asked whether the two women would be co-heiresses, as in some other manors, but the eldest was found to take all, to the exclusion of her sister. The custom of the manor of Inglewood is to the same effect, the eldest daughter, sister, or other female descendant inheriting.
A question arose some forty-five years ago as to a peculiar custom existing in the barony of Greystoke. Mr. William Bleaymire, the then steward, stated that by custom of that barony a customary tenant might convey such tenement without concurrence of his wife, as no widow was entitled to free bench in lands disposed of by her husband in his lifetime, he not dying seized thereof. Three or four years later a very similar question arose in the manor of Glassonby, the particular point being whether an owner could devise his customary land to his children so as to deprive his wife (to whom he was married prior to 1834) of her dower or free bench therein. The late Mr. Lawrence Harrison, the steward of the manor, decided that “the man dies seized of the customary tenement; therefore, notwithstanding his will, she is entitled to free bench according to the custom. The Dower Act in nowise affects the custom.” It is a well-known fact that the manorial customs in one village may be exactly contrary to those obtaining in an adjoining one. In some manors daughters are practically unnoticed, and in this connection an interesting point connected with the manor of Watermillock once came up. Mr. Bleaymire decided that an eldest daughter would be entitled to certain property in that manor, subject to her mother’s free bench, which was one half.
A fruitful source of litigation, and of disputes of a less costly character, may be found in the demands made even in quite recent times, that purchasers should personally attend the Manorial Court in order to have admittance. In some local cases such attendance is rigidly enforced, but in others—the manor of Edenhall for instance—the purchaser is admitted on production of deed of bargain and sale. The law books contain many cases in which this point has been stubbornly fought. In the manor of Cumwhitton no admittances are granted, but the property passes by deed of bargain and sale with the licence of the steward endorsed on the deed, and a simple enrolment of the purchaser. In the manors of Morland, Plumpton, and Croglin, the parties seeking to be admitted must attend in person or by attorney.
In the manor of Renwick, by an indenture mutually agreed upon in 1676, the tenants, in addition to a variety of financial payments, were obliged to scour and cleanse the water course to the lord’s mill from the bottom up to the mill trough head, and maintain the mill with wall and thatch; bring millstones thereto, and grind their corn thereat, paying a twenty-fourth multure. They were entitled to such house-boot as the steward might be pleased to allot. Some of the mills were of considerable value, a fact which will be readily understood when it is remembered how tenaciously lords of manors clung to the right almost down to our own time. The lord of Drigg had a mill, to which, as was so frequently the case, the tenants were bound. In these days, fortunately, this and other requirements are not enforced. The same manor had flotsam, jetsam, and lagan, “and so it was adjudged upon a trial at bar between Henry, Earl of Northumberland, and Sir Nicholas Curwen in Queen Elizabeth’s time, and afterwards a decree in Chancery for conforming the said prescription and securing that right to the sea against the lord paramount.”
The rector of Caldbeck is, or was, entitled to claim a God’s penny upon the change of tenant by death, in his manor in the lower part of the parish. Multure (“mooter”) was formerly a common form of tax in Cumberland; very many instances of its imposition by lords of manors might be quoted, but sometimes it extended to the markets. The following is a copy of a bill relating to a revolt on the part of the inhabitants of Cockermouth, but the writer has not been able to discover to what extent, and whether immediately, the residents in the old borough succeeded in their protest:—
COCKERMOUTH TOLLS.
At a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Cockermouth, holden at the Court House, on Saturday the 13th Instant, to take into consideration the unjust and illegal manner in which
brought into Cockermouth Market, has for some years past been taken; and it having been admitted by the Lord of the Manor, that the Toll of Corn is
ONE HANDFUL
Out of each Sack sold in the
Market, and no more;
It was unanimously resolved, that the undermentioned Gentlemen be appointed to attend the Corn Market, for the purpose of observing the mode in which the Toll is taken in future; also that the Landowners, Farmers, and others, be requested to give information to them, if more than the Legal Toll be hereafter required or taken by the Lessees of the Tolls, or if they take it from Grain not actually sold, in order that such measures may be pursued by and for the Parties aggrieved as the Law allows.
| Messrs. | Joseph Steel, | Messrs. | Joshua Sim, |
| William Wood, | John Fisher, | ||
| John Hodgson, | Thomas Wilson. |
That a Meeting of the Inhabitants of Cockermouth, together with the Landowners and Farmers of its Vicinity, be holden in the Court House,
On Monday the 22d Inst. at Two o’Clock
IN THE AFTERNOON,
to form an ASSOCIATION for the purpose of Prosecuting any Person or Persons TAKING MORE TOLL than is allowed by the Ancient Prescription.
Cockermouth, March 15th, 1830.
The lordship of Millom was anciently exempted from the jurisdiction of the Sheriff of Cumberland; the lords had power to licence their own ale-houses, and wreck of the sea was enjoyed until a comparatively recent period—certainly up to near the end of last century—“whereof,” says Nicolson, “much benefit is frequently made, it being almost surrounded by the sea.”
A very unusual tenure has been noted as being in existence in the township of Kirkland, a few miles from Wigton. It was stated thus a century and a quarter ago:—“The tenants have a lease granted to them generally by Mr. Lancelot Salkeld, father of Sir Francis, for 999 years, paying a certain yearly rent for every tenement, amounting in the whole to £6 15s. 1d. yearly, and every twenty-one years they are to pay a fine to the lord, viz., a twenty-penny fine, which they call a running gressom, and then take new leases, but pay no general fine upon the lord’s death, nor upon change of tenant, but they pay a heriot upon the death of every tenant.” Tenures of cumin do not appear to have been common in the two counties. The best known of the kind was in the time of Henry the Eighth, when a yearly rent of 2½d., and one pound of cumin and services was paid by the heirs of John Reede to Fountains Abbey, for the fish garths in Crosthwaite, Keswick.
By the custom of some places a parson might be obliged to keep a bull and a boar, for the use of the parishioners, in consideration of his having tithes of calves and pigs. Such a condition held in certain parishes in Cumberland, but as the stipulation said nothing as to the quality of the animals to be maintained, many farmers, with the progress of agriculture and education, began to keep their own, and the requirement gradually became a dead letter.
A peculiar obligation concerning Sparket Mill was laid on the tenants in the hamlet of Thackthwaite, in Watermillock parish, as is explained in the following “Verdict of the Head Jurie of Weathermelock, May 9th, 1709”:—“As for the controversie betwixt the Tennents of Thackthwaite and ye miller of Sparkhead Mill concerning the repairing of the Mill Dam and the race, we find upon Oath and upon notice given by ye miller the tennents of Thackthwaite are to make ye race sufficient to carry water from the Dam to the Trough Head, upon condition that the miller give them every time they meet to work it a Pott of ale and a pennyworth of tobacco as they have had formerly. And as for the Dam we likewise find upon Oath that the repairing of the same belongs to the Lord of ye Mannor.”
What would owners of dogs in these days think and say were such regulations in force as used to be enforced at the ancient Cumberland town of Egremont? The old ordinances of Richard Lucy for the government of the borough declared that “those who hold burgage tenure in Egremont shall find armed men for the defence of the fortress forty days at their own charge; shall find twelve men for the lord’s military array, and be bound to aids for his redemption from captivity, and hold watch and ward; and that they shall not enter the forest with bow and arrow, nor cut off their dogs’ feet within the borough.” The explanation of the last item is that the inhabitants of the forest, who kept dogs to defend their dwellings, were obliged to cut off one foot to prevent their chasing the game, but the precaution was not considered necessary in the town.
Among the local peppercorn rents the following is interesting. The Gill estate, in the parish of Bromfield, is said to have belonged to the Reays “as long as any other estate in the kingdom has been in one family.” The tradition is that the head of the family had the then extensive lands of Gill granted to him and his heirs by William the Lion, King of Scotland in the twelfth century, not only in reward for his fidelity to his prince, but as a memorial of his extraordinary swiftness of foot in pursuing the deer; outstripping in fleetness most of the horsemen and dogs. The conditions of the grant were that he should pay a peppercorn yearly, and that the name of William should, if possible, be perpetuated in the family. There were several eminent men among the descendants, but the distinctive Christian name is no longer strictly adhered to.
An estate enjoying exemption from payments of tithes is that of Scale Houses, in the parish of Renwick. This arose, declared a writer early in the present century, “owing to an ancient owner of the land having slain a noxious cockatrice, which the vulgar at this day call a crack-a-Christ as they rehearse the simple fable.” The document which gives this exemption is believed to be still in existence. Among the dues to which the abbot and convent of Shap could claim were services and money payments from Bampton as “alms corn,” and there was a similar tribute from Mauld’s Meaburn and Hoff. Burn mentions in his chapter on Bewcastle a tenant’s duty not publicly noted in any other local manor, the people having to pay yearly customary rent, quit rents for improvements, and £2 1s. 4d. carriage money, whatever that may have been.
There was a curious regulation in one of the divisions of Windermere parish, which lasted up to about 1780:—“It was anciently customary in the township of Applethwaite for every tenant’s wife who lived below the highway to pay 5d. yearly rent to the lord of the manor, and every other woman above 16 years of age 2d., above the road every tenant’s wife paid 3d., and every other woman above 16, a penny. How this custom originated, or why the ladies on the low side of the road were rated higher than their contemporaries in the opposite division, we are unable to say.”[9]
Among the old manorial officers at Cockermouth chosen at the Michaelmas Courts were a bailiff, assessors, assessors of bread and ale, mill-lookers, moor-lookers, hedge-lookers, leather searchers, swine-ringers, and appraisers. The jury of the Leet formed the special jury for the government of the borough, and the bailiff was the returning officer for elections, as well as clerk of the market. At Egremont the officers chosen annually were a borough serjeant, two bailiffs, four constables, two hedge and corn-viewers, and assessors of damages. Most of the old manors, indeed, would furnish examples of quaint offices, whose purpose is now scarcely known. A good deal might be written concerning the old manorial and other Courts of the two counties. Occasionally these still afford interesting proceedings, but the real purpose for holding them has ceased to exist. The Courts of Pie Poudre, at Appleby and several other places; the Court of Conscience, or, as it was commonly called, the Wapentake Court, and the Court of Record at Kendal; and the many Court Leets, are now merely matters of local history.