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 328 THE DATING OF THE EARLY PIPE ROLLS July doctrine that land held by serjeanty was not partible ; 1 but what concerns us here is the ship service. 2 For this office (ministerium) was connected with the king's Hastings Esnecca, and the family of Bee (or Bek), which held it with the land at ' Burne ', gave to that place the distinctive name of Bekesbourne (now, corruptly, Beaksbourne). Here we have the explanation of this ' inland Kentish village ', south -east of Canterbury, being a (non-corporate) member, under Hastings, of the Cinque Ports, a fact, wrote Captain Burrows, which ' has never been explained ' 3 The pedigree was this : Koger de Burnes. Illaria 1, Avicia Held the land m. Hugh de (or Amicia) by serjeanty. Bek m. William Left a widow 1 William de Bek de Aldingfes] I have now made good my statement that the above extract from the Pipe Roll of 2 Richard I (1190) remained unknown to our historians, in spite of its value and importance, until I drew attention to it through Mr. Archer's book (1888), although it had been published, in facsimile, so far back as 1865. There is one point more, at least, for which we are indebted to these naval accounts of 1190. We discover from them that, in that year, the seaman's pay was twopence, and that of the captain fourpence : when we turn to the corresponding accounts for the Cinque Ports ships in 1293, 4 we find that the 1 magister ' received sixpence and the seaman threepence a day. The pay, therefore, had increased 50 per cent, in 103 years. As to my special concern, namely, the dating of the rolls, proba- bly the most correct dating is that of Miss Norgate in her John Lackland (1902). She has evidently consulted the rolls herself, and has dated them correctly, from p. 26 onwards, 5 down to • the Pipe Roll of Michaelmas 1194 ', to which she gives eleven infer- ences (p. 52 n.) as that of ' 6 Ric. I '. It is most singular, there- fore, that on p. 54 she should date this roll as ' Pipe Roll 7 Ric. I (1196) ' ; for this is not only in direct contradiction of the date 1 See my Peerage and Pedigree, i. 118-24. 2 ' Willelmus [de Bee] dicit quod terra ilia est de sergeantia Domini Regis et non debet partiri, et profert cartam Domini Regis H. patris [i. e. Henry II], in qua continetur quod ipse concessit et dedit Hugoni de Becco ministerium de Eshetka [? Esnecka] sua de Hasting quern Rogerus de Burnes frater Illarie uxoris Hugonis de Becco habuit et antecessores sui ante eum. . . et precepit quod idem Hugo habeat et teneat et heredes sui ministerium illud cum terris et omnibus pertinen' in pace etc. sicut unquam antecessores Rogeri plenius etc. tempore H. regis avi ' (p. 39 b). These closing words should be compared with those in the Campbell charter xxix. 9, in the British Museum. 3 Cinque Ports, p. 243. * Bed Book, p. 715. 5 e.g. ' 2 Ric. I (1190) ', ' 5 Ric. I (1193) ', ' 1191 (3 Ric. I) '.