Ayllington or Elton, Hunts, is remarkable on account of the contrast between its free and servile holdings, as described in the Hundred Rolls. It would be interesting to know whether the former are to be considered as ancient free tenements, or as the outcome of modern exemptions. The Hundred Rolls point in the first direction (ii. 656). Some of the tenements under discussion are said to be held de conquestu, and it would be impossible to put any other interpretation on this term than that of 'original occupation.' It means the same as the 'de antiquo conquestu' of other surveys ([sup. p. 453]).

But when we compare the inquisition published in the Ramsey Cartulary (Rolls Ser. i. 487 sqq.) we come upon a difficulty. There the holdings are constantly arranged under the two headings of virgatae operariae and virgatae positae ad censum, the population is divided into operarii and censuarii, and in one case we find even the following passage: 'item quaelibet domus, habens ostium apertum versus vicum, tam de malmannis, quam de cotmannis et operariis, inveniret unum hominem ad lovebone, sine cibo domini, praeter Ricardum Pemdome, Henricum Franceys, Galfridum Blundy, Henricum le Monnier.' And so most of the free people are actually called molmen, and this would seem to imply that they were libere tenentes only in consequence of commutation.

It seems to me that there is no occasion for such an inference. The molmen in the passage quoted are evidently the same as the censuarii of other passages, and although, in a general way, the expression mal was probably employed of quit-rents, still it was wide enough to interchange with gafol, and to designate all kinds of rents, without any regard to their origin. And of course, this is even more the case with census. Upon the whole, I do not see sufficient reason to doubt that we have freeholders before us who held their land and paid rent ever since the original occupation of the soil.

INDEX.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Miss Lamond's edition of Walter of Henley did not appear until the greater part of my book was in type. I had studied the work in MS. So also I studied the Cartulary of Battle Abbey in MS. without being aware that it had been edited by Mr. Scargill Bird. Had Mr. Gomme's Village Communities come to my hands at an earlier date I should have made more references to it.