The customs of Dyddanham[[1048]] impose upon the gebúr the duty of finding the cyricsceat to the lord’s barn, but whether because the lord was an ecclesiastic does not clearly appear.
The important provisions of Denewulf’s and Ealhfrið’s charters have been sufficiently illustrated in the text.
After the conquest, Chirset or Chircettum, as it is called, was very irregularly levied: it appears to have been granted occasionally by the lords to the church, but no longer to have been a general impost: and nothing is more common than to find it considered as a set-off against other forms of rent-paying, on lay as well as ecclesiastical land. If the tenant gave work, he usually paid no chircet: if he paid chircet, his amount of labour-rent was diminished: a strong evidence, if any more were wanted, that cyricsceat has nothing whatever to do with church-rate.
[1036]. Ann. de Noyon, t. ii. p. 805.
Turbulenta conjuratio facta communionis (epistolæ Ivonis Carnotensis episcopi, apud script. rer. franc., t. xv. p. 105).
Cum primùm communia acquisita fuit, omnes Viromandiæ pares, et omnes clerici, salvo ordine suo, omnesque milites, salvâ fidelitate comitis, firmiter tenendam juraverunt. (Recueil des ordonnances des rois de France, t. xi. p. 270.)
[1037]. “Forum rerum venalium Lundenwíc.” Vit. Bonif. Pertz, Mon. ii. 338.
[1038]. He clearly considers the northern branch of the Humber, which we now call the Ouse, to be the continuation of the river.
[1039]. Vit. Ælfr. an. 867.