[18] For the conditions of life on Anglo-Saxon Manor see Seebohm's "Village Communities."
[19] The exact size of the ancient Cornish acre is unknown.
[20] Inderwick's "The King's Peace."
It is fair to add that the Rev. T. Taylor informs me:—"An examination of the Court Rolls given by Maitland makes it evident that where there were few freemen, the villeins were suitors at the Court, and that it is impossible to say that the absence of the former drove the villeins to the Hundred Court."
[21] In the Inquisitio Nonarum of 1346 the phrase "ecclesia Sanctae Bryacae cum capellis Sanctorum Correnti Wynyantoni et Gyrmough" occurs.
[From the Norman Conquest to the Reformation.]
CHAPTER III.
In dealing with the Norman period, to make the story of Breage clear, it is necessary in the first place again to refer briefly to the Earldom of Cornwall. From the time of the Norman Conquest, when the earldom was created, to the time of Edward the Black Prince, when it was exalted into a duchy, the earldom was held by a series of twelve earls. Since the time of the Black Prince the Duchy of Cornwall has always been held by the eldest son of the reigning Sovereign.
Giraldus describes the ecclesiastical polity of the Normans in no flattering terms. If his version be correct—and there seems little reason in the main to doubt it—the Normans simply regarded the endowments of the Church as a means of satisfying the rapacity of a swarm of needy ecclesiastics from the other side of the Channel.