Feudal Privileges of the Honour and Manor of Hornby.—These ancient privileges comprised free warren, subject to a fine of 10l. on encroachments on the King's forests; right of market and fair at Arkholme and at Hornby; court of view of frank-pledge; sheriff's turn; free court of all pleas; assize of bread; soc, sac, tol, and them; infangetheof and utfangetheof; hamsocn; leyrwite; murder; acquittance of shires and hundreds, lestage [or lastage], aids of sheriffs and their bailiffs, and amercements; wardships, and works and enclosures of castles, parks, and bridges; and of passage, frontage, stallage, toll, paiage, and money given for murder; and right to pontage, stallage, hidage, and pickage. All these feudal customs were confirmed in the 12th Charles I. (1636) to Henry Parker, Lord Morley and Monteagle.[212]
A number of the above terms require explanation. "Money given for murder," implied the fines levied on a district in which a murder had been committed, and the criminal not discovered; "the privilege of murder" was the power to levy such fines; thus the town or hundred which suffered an Englishman, who had killed a Dane there to escape, was to be amerced sixty-six marks [44l.] to the King. Hamsocn, is the privilege or liberty of a man's own house, its violation is burglary. Leyr or lecher wite, is the privilege of punishing adultery and fornication. Passage is a toll for passing over water, as at a ford or ferry; pontage is bridge toll; stallage, a toll for stalls in a market; paiage or pavage, is a paving toll. Sac, the right of a lord to hold pleas in his court, in causes of trespass among his tenants; soc, the right to administer justice and execute laws; toll, the right to levy tolls on tenants; them, the right to hear, restrain, and judge bondmen and villeins, with their children, goods and chattels, &c. Infangetheof, the lord's privilege to judge any thief taken within his fee. Outfangtheof, the right of the lord to call men dwelling within his manor, and taken for felony outside his fee, to judgment in the lord's own court.
THE LORD'S YULE FEAST AT ASHTON.
Among the customs of the Manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, as described by the late Dr. Hibbert-Ware, was the making of so-called "presents" by the tenants-at-will to the lord of the manor, for the sake of partaking in the annual feast at the great hall. In the rental of Sir John de Assheton, made in November 1422, these presents are claimed as an obligatory service from the tenants-at-will, in the following terms:—"That they shall give their presents at Yole [Christmas]; every present to such a value as is written and set in the rental; and the lord shall feed all his said tenants, and their wifes, upon Yole-day at the dinner, if they like for to come; but the said tenants and their wifes, though it be for their ease not to come, they shall send neither man nor woman in their name,—but if [unless] they be their son or their daughter dwelling with them,—unto the dinner; for the lord is not bounden to feed them all, only the good man and the good wife." In some manor-houses of Lancashire, once dedicated to these annual scenes of festivity, may be observed an elevation of the floor [or daïs] at the extremity of the great hall, or, in the place of it, a gallery which stretches along one side of the room [many halls have both daïs and gallery] to accommodate the lord and his family, so that they might not be annoyed by the coarse rustic freedoms which the tenants would be too apt to take during the hours of their conviviality. In a hall, then, of this kind in the manor-house at Assheton, we may imagine the large Yule fire to be kindled; while in a gallery or raised floor Sir John of Assheton, his lady, and family, together with his kinsmen, Elland of Brighouse, and Sir John the Byron, are feasting apart, yet attentive to the frolics or old songs of the company below. It was on these occasions that peg-tankards were used, and horns that bore the names of the Saxons and Danes, whom the Normans had ousted out of their possessions. Of the description of ale that flowed merrily on these occasions we know little; but there can be no doubt that it was like King Henry the Eighth's ale, which contained neither hops nor brimstone. We may suppose, then, that on annual festivals like these, the wooden bowl or horn would pass freely through the hands of Sir John of Assheton's tenants-at-will; among whom were such personages as Hobbe Adamson, Hobbe of the Leghes, William the arrow-smith, Roger the baxter, Roger le smith, Jack the spencer, Jack the hind, Elyn Wilkyn daughter, Elyn the rose, and the widows Mergot of Staley, Peryn's wife, and Nan of the Windy Bank,—all clad in their best hoods, and brown woollen jackets and petticoats. The ancient musical instruments used in Lancashire were a kind of fiddle, not of the present form, and a stringed instrument called the virginals. The provincial songs of that period, few of which were less than half-an-hour in length, rehearsed the deeds of Launcelot du Lake, and his conquest of the giant Tarquin, at the castle of Manchester; Ranulph of Chester, and his wars in the Holy Land; or the warlike feats and amorous prowess of the renowned Cheshire hero, Roger de Calverley. In order to preserve, as much as possible, the degree of decorum that was necessary at such meetings, there was firstly introduced a diminutive pair of stone stocks, of about eighteen inches in length, for confining within them the fingers of the unruly. This instrument was entrusted to the general prefect of manorial festivities named the King of Misrule, whose office it was to punish all who exceeded his royal notions of decency. Accordingly such a character appears among the list of Sir John of Assheton's tenants, under the name of Hobbe the king. From these entertainments being supported by the contributions of the tenants, they were derisively called Drink-leans. [Læn, A.-S. a loan, a gift, a reward; Læne, adj., lean, slender, fragile.][213]
RIDING THE BLACK LAD AT ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE.
In the rental of Sir John Assheton, knight, of his Manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, A.D. 1422, it is stated that two of his sons, Rauf of Assheton, and Robyn of Assheton, by grants to them, "have the sour carr guld rode and stane rynges for the term of their lives." This donation (says Dr. Hibbert-Ware) evidently alludes to the privilege of Guld-riding, a custom that in Scotland at least is of great antiquity, having been intended to prevent lands from being over-run with the weeds, which, from their yellow colour, were named gools or gulds, i.e., the corn-marigold, or Chrysanthemum Segetum of Linn. Boethius (lib. 10) mentions a law of king Kenneth (probably rather of Alexander II.) to prevent the growth of manaleta or guld, and to impose a fine of oxen on proof of its infraction. The Rev. J. P. Bannerman, in a statistical account of the parish of Cargill, in Perthshire, states that with a view of extirpating this weed, "after allowing a reasonable time for procuring clean seed from other grounds, an act of the Baron Court was passed, enforcing an old Act of Parliament to the same effect, imposing a fine of 3s. 4d., or a wether sheep, on the tenants for every stock of gool that should be found growing in their corn at a particular day; and certain persons styled gool-riders were appointed to ride through the fields, search for gool, and carry the law into execution when they discovered it. Though the fine of a wether sheep is now commuted and reduced to a penny, the practice of gool-riding is still kept up, and the fine rigidly exacted." To this origin Dr. Hibbert-Ware attributes the custom peculiar to Ashton-under-Lyne of "Riding the Black Lad." He states that in the days of Sir John of Assheton (A.D. 1422) a large portion of low wet land in the vicinity of Assheton was named the Sour Carr (carr being synonymous with the Scotch word carse, and the well-known term sour implying an impoverished state of the carr). It had been over-run with corn-marigolds or carr-gulds, which were so destructive to the corn that the lord of the manor enforced some rigorous measures for their extirpation, similar to the carr-guld riding in Perthshire. Ralph of Assheton, Sir John's son by a second marriage, and Robin, his brother, were on a certain day in the spring [Easter-Monday] invested with the power of riding over the lands of the carr, named the Carr Guld Rode, of levying fines for all carr-gulds that were found among the corn, and, until the penalties were paid, of punishing transgressors by putting them into the [finger] stocks or stone rings, or by incarceration. Ralph Assheton, by his alliance with a rich heiress, became the lord of the neighbouring manor of Middleton, and soon afterwards received the honour of knighthood; being at the same time entrusted with the office of Vice-Constable of the kingdom; and it is added, of Lieutenant of the Tower. Invested with such authorities, he committed violent excesses in this part of the kingdom. Retaining for life the privilege granted him in Ashton of Guld-riding, he, on a certain day in spring, made his appearance in the manor, clad in black armour (whence his name of the Black Lad or Black Boy) mounted on a charger, and attended with a numerous train of his own followers, in order to levy the penalty arising from the neglect of clearing the land from carr-gulds. The interference of so powerful a knight belonging to another township could not but be regarded by the tenants of Assheton as the tyrannical intrusion of a stranger; and as Sir Ralph, sanctioned by the political power given him by Henry VI., exercised his privilege with the utmost severity, the name of the Black Lad is still regarded with sentiments of horror. Tradition has, indeed, perpetuated the prayer that was fervently ejaculated for a deliverance from his tyranny:—
Sweet Jesu! for thy mercy's sake,
And for thy bitter passion,
Save us from the axe of the Tower,
And from Sir Ralph of Ashton.
Upon the death of the Black Knight, Sir John's heir and successor abolished the usage for ever, reserving for the estate a small sum of money for the purpose of perpetuating, in an annual ceremony, the dreaded annual visits of the Black Boy. This is still kept up. An effigy is made of a man in armour; and since Sir Ralph was the son of a second marriage (which, for this reason, had been esteemed by the heir of Sir John as an unfortunate match) the image is deridingly emblazoned with some emblem of the occupation of the first couple that are linked together in the course of the year. [Mr. Edwin Butterworth says with the initials of their names.] The Black Boy is then fixed on horseback, and, after being led in procession round the town, is dismounted, made to supply the place of a shooting-butt, and, all fire-arms being in requisition for the occasion, he is put to an ignominious death. [The origin of Riding the Black Lad, here suggested, is exceedingly ingenious; but it seems questionable whether any real data for it are given in the single passage cited from the rental of 1422. "The Sour Carr Guld Rode and the Stane Ringes" taken as they stand, may mean the Guld-ruyding, or ridding, as a piece of land cleared of stumps, &c., was called; ex. gr. Hunt-royd, Orme-rod, Blake-rod, &c. The Stone Rings may be a piece of land so-called. There is no mention of the power to levy penalties, nor even of any official riding, but only the rode,—not road, as it has been interpreted, but ridded land, perhaps cleared from gulds and weeds, no less than from stubs, stumps, and stones.—Eds.][214]
Mr. Roby, from the above materials, has written a tale of Sir Ralph's cruel seizure of a widow's only cow, as the heriot due to him as lord of the manor, on the death of her husband. Her half-witted son is said to have told Sir Ralph that on his death his master the devil would claim a heriot, and that Sir Ralph himself would be given up. On this Sir Ralph took fright, and sent back the heriot cow to the poor widow. Another tradition exists as to the origin of the custom of "Riding the Black Lad," which Mr. Roby thinks may have been fabricated merely to throw off the odium attached to the name of Sir Ralph. In the reign of Edward III. one Thomas Assheton fought under Queen Philippa in the battle of Neville's Cross. Riding through the ranks of the enemy, he bore away the royal standard from the Scotch king's tent, who himself was afterwards taken prisoner. King Edward, on his return from France, conferred on Thomas the honour of knighthood, with the title of "Sir Thomas Assheton of Assheton-under-Lyne." To commemorate this singular display of valour, Sir Thomas instituted the custom of "Riding the Black Knight or Lad" at Assheton, on Easter-Monday; leaving 10s. yearly to support it, together with his own suit of black velvet, and a coat of mail. Which of these accounts of the origin of the custom is correct, there is now no evidence to determine.