(Ibid. p. 472)
We have also seen often in the church, corn, and hay, and all kinds of peculiar things kept;
Mass priest[14] ought always to have at their houses a school of disciples, and if any good man desire to commit his little ones to them for instruction, they ought very gladly to receive them, and kindly teach them.... They ought not, however, for that instruction to desire anything from their relations, except what they shall be willing to do for them of their own accord....
Also we command those mass priests, who are subjected to us, that they very earnestly [busy] themselves about the people’s learning: that those who are learned in books frequently and zealously teach their parishioners from these books, who may not be so far learned in books.
BOUNDARY DISPUTE SETTLED, A.D. 896
(Ibid., p. 139)
“In that year Ethelred, alderman, summoned all the witan of the Mercians together at Gloster, bishops and aldermen and all his chief men, and did that with the knowledge and leave of King Alfred.... Then bishop Werferth made known to the ‘witan’ that almost all the woodland had been reft from him that belonged to Woodchester which king Ethelbald gave to Worcester in perpetual alms, as mastland and woodland, to bishop Wilferth ... and then Aethelwald [the occupier] forthwith declared that he would not oppose the right.... And so very mildly gave it up to the bishop, and ordered his ‘geneat’ named Eclaf, to ride with the townsmen’s priest, named Wulfhere; and he then led him along all the boundaries as he read them to him from the old books how king Ethelbald had before increased and given it. Then, however, Aethelwald desired of the bishop and the convent that they would kindly allow him to enjoy it while he lived, and Allmund his son; and they would hold it in fee of him and the convent; and, he never, nor either of them would bereave him of the pannage right, which he had allowed him in Longridge, for the time in which God gave it to him.... So did the witan of the Mercians declare it in the ‘gemot’; and showed him the charters of the land.... And thus the townsmen’s priest rode it, and Aethelwald’s ‘geneat’ with him.... Thus did Aethelwald’s man point out to him the boundaries as the old charters directed and indicated.”
MANORIAL SYSTEM
FITZHERBERT’S ACCOUNT OF THE RISE OF MANORS
(Sir A. Fitzherbert, Book of Husbandry; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce. App. 1, Edition 1882.)