Page:History of Manchester (1771), Volume 1, by John Whitaker.djvu/290

 ♦' Chap. VIII. O F MA NCHESTER, 259 and three broad 7. But if the provifion was not furnifhed at the time appointed, the chieftain paid in lieu of it a pound and twenty-four pence, the former payment being denominated the Twnc Punt or the Tributary Pound, and the latter, being entitled Argant Y Gwynos or the Supper-filver 8. Beneath the referve of thefe fer vices and payments, the uchelwyto had a full property in their lands, ahd could tranfmit them to their heirs K The lands were originally given away by the king under the li- mitation of thefe duties^ The nonperformance of them muft have neceffarily extinguifhed the title of the chief. And thfr lands reverted to the. crown that gave them xo. Inferior to thefe, and holding from them as lords in fee or holding as they held immediately from tljc crown, was the great body of the people, being efteemed, as Caefar declares the com* mon people in Gaul to have been reckoned, Pen£ fervorum loco, and all abfolutely in a ftate of villainage ,x. Thefe were divided into the two clafles of Nativi liberi or free villains and of Puri nativi or compleat villains 1 *. The former were allowed to re- linquifh their lands or to remain upon them at their own difcre** tion, were privileged to buy and to fell, and were charged with fervicesthe moft honourable of the mefiial kind and all afiiiredly determinate IJ. The latter were reckoned abfolutely the pro- perty of the lord, difpofable to any one at his will, and fale- able as a part of his eftate ■*. The latter were bound to fervices the moft fervile and the moft indeterminate, to conftruft and repair the lord's houfes, and to execute all his drudgeries of hiifbandry ,5. They were both fubjeft, like the chiefs, to at- tendance in war and to payments in money or returns in kind. And it ftrongly evinces the great humanity and the free genius of 1 thefe villain tenures, that both had them generally as fettled and determinate as they. The villains on a fee of one thoufand acres made annually two large remittances to the lord I6. One was, like the noble's, immediately before the winter, and con- fifled of a fow three years old, a veilel of butter three palms long and three broad, a barrel of braget nine palms in length, twenty-four equal threaveis of oats for* the horfes, lixty-fix loaves , LI 2 of