Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 5.djvu/35

Rh servitium regale was only one sort of extrinsecum servitium, or utban.

Whenever the donor of property conveyed it free and discharged from all utiban, the only operation of his grant, unless confirmed by the crown, would be to oblige him to indemnify the grantee. The Plympton charter, cited by Cowel, enables the grantee to reimburse himself out of the reserved quit rent.

I think the word will not be found in any original charters much later than the twelfth century, although it may have found its way into some royal charters of general exemption in the following century.

—This word occurs in grants, court rolls, and rentals in Devonshire. It is noticed in the glossary at the end of Dr. Oliver's Monasticon, but without citing the instrument in which it occurs, so that I am unable to say whether his explanation is founded on conjecture, or is warranted by the tenor and purport of the document itself. If, as is stated by the learned author of that work, it is ever used in the sense of lamp-bote or a contribution to the supply of the lamps or lights of a church, then it is used in a different sense, and is, in fact, a different word, from that which I propose to explain.

In a grant, of which my friend Mr. Pitman Jones, of Exeter, has kindly supplied me with a copy, and which was found by Dr. Oliver in Grandisson's Register, (vol. ii. fol. 101 b.) dated 11th December, 2 Edw. III., that prelate granted "Edwardo Atte Water, nativo nostro, quod ipse habeat et teneat in villenagio totum illud tenementum cum landebotis adjacentibus, quod Ricardus Atte Water, pater ipsius Edwardi et nativus noster, quondam tenuit in manerio nostro de Asperton, tenendum in villenagio secundum consuetudinem manerii nostri ibidem ad totam vitam suam."

In the rental of Sidmouth manor, contained in the Otterton Custumal, a MS. of the 13th century, (fol. 31,) there is a distinct head of "Lambote de Sydemue," followed by a list of tenures at small rents, there explained to be "parvæ augmentationes ad voluntatem domini." They were evidently small customary tenements in the manor of Sidmouth taken in augmentation of old tenures in that manor.

In another manor in the same county the nature of landbote tenements is still more satisfactorily explained. New grants of laud, parcel of the demesne of Lidford and forest of