Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 6.djvu/384

240 THE GAD-WHIP MANORIAL SERVICE, and the tenants claimed to perform the services by which they held. They contributed to the state and magnificence of the ceremony, and the gratification of the attendance, and the piece of plate or other valuable article which fell to the tenant's lot as his fee, made the service to be regarded by him as more a benefit than a burden. Passing by these, and also the services in Petty Serjeanty, where the tenant had to render to the king something in the nature of arms or armour, or at least relating to war, there were numerous instances among the tenures in socage, both of the king and others, in which the services reserved were very fanciful, and a few in which they seem whimsical; such as lifting up the right hand towards the king on Christmas day wherever he might be in England; hunting the king's wild greese (swine) on a certain day; gathering wool off whitethorns for the queen; holding the lord's stirrup on certain occasions; and what, let us hope, was not very rigorously exacted, rendering a snow-ball at Midsummer, and a red rose at Christmas. One man held by saying a Paternoster daily for the king's soul; another by saying five Paternosters daily for the king's ancestors; from which services these tenants may be assumed to have acquired their surname of Paternoster. A Percy, a scion of the noble house of Louvain, held property at Levington, Yorkshire, by a service no doubt far more agreeable than most others, viz., by repairing to Skelton Castle on Christmas day, and leading the lady of the castle from her chamber to chapel, and thence to her chamber, and afterwards dining with her before he departed.

But one of the most extraordinary tenures escaped the notice of the assiduous collector above named, and his editor, Mr. J. Beckwith, though the service has been only recently discontinued. The earliest mention I have found of it is in Cough's edition of Camden's Britannia, vol. ii., p. 276, on the authority of a communication made to the Spalding Society. There is also an account of it in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for 17.99, taken from the "British Critic" of the same year, and of this the editor of the third and last edition of Blount's Ancient Tenures has availed himself; but for the more full and correct account which I am enabled to give, the Institute is indebted to Mr. Moore, of Lincoln, who has lately brought the subject before the Society in a communication read at one of our monthly meetings. The service was