Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/430

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NOTES AND QUERIES. do* s. i. APRIL so, 1904.

middle lords. So that if the king granted a manor to A, and A granted a portion of the land to B, now B was said to hold of A, and A of the king ; or, in other words, B held his land immediately of A, but mediately of the king. The king therefore was styled lord paramount ; A was both tenant and lord, or was a mesne lord ; and B was called tenant paravail, or the lowest tenant."

The question of " privileges and burdens " (to use B. R.'s expression) would be one of fact, having regard to the terms of the original grant to the tenant in capite, and to the risk of the king exercising his power of forfeiture under that grant to say nothing of the terms of the grants as between each immediate lord and tenant. MISTLETOE.

THE PLOUGHGANG AND OTHER MEASURES <10 th S. i. 101, 143). If MR. ADDY had lived in one of the more southern counties, such as Oxford, Buckingham, or Berkshire, and asked oneof theolder rural labourers, whose memory took him back to days before Enclosure Acts were passed, what an acre was, he would have been told that an acre was a strip of land in the open field 22 yards wide, that half an acre was a strip 11 yards wide, and a quarter acre or rood was a strip 5^ yards wide. To undertand the meaning of this statement he will have to supplement by what was always understood, that the normal length of all the strips was a furlong, or 220 yards. Hence acre as a measure of length and in this sense it occurs sometimes in Domesday is the equivalent of 22 yards.

A glance at any one of the old maps show- ing the strips held by the different tenants in the open field would have convinced him that the open field usually consisted of three fields, the normal size of each of which was 40 acres, and that each of the three fields was again subdivided into shots, so arranged that the furlong ran to 220 yards. When the lie of the ground rendered this impossible if, for instance, the furlong were of extra length the normal width was curtailed. If, on the other hand, the furlong ran short, the normal width was extended. If the difference of length were only trifling, the normal width was adhered to, but in that case the nominal acre might be greater or less than an acre. I have such a map before me, show- ing the holding of each tenant, either acre, half acre, or quarter acre nominal, in each shot of each field, and specify- ing the actual acreage by admeasure- ment in each case. I therefore very respectfully submit that a full homestead or house-land, the original hide, familia, or casatus, consisted of one full acre in each shot of each field, which would normally be

120. As the villagers' tenements usually lay near to each other in the township (villa), whereas the open field lay outside the village, it seems to me an ingenious theory, but one as yet far from proven, that the size of the messuage fixed the measure of a quarter acre.

So far as Devonshire is concerned I think MR. ADDY is correct in giving UO acres as the extent of the plough or teamland. To be strictly accurate he should have said 64 ; and if to this is added the amount taken up by mere-balks, linches, and green ways, the team- land would cover some 80 acres as measured on the Ordnance Survey. In the survey of Berry Pomeroy, taken in 1292, in 'Testa Nevil,' the ferling is stated to consist of 16 acres, and the normal holding of each villager to be 2 ferlings, or 32 acres, which' agrees with MR. ADDY'S statement. Only it must not be sup- posed that these 32 acres formed one piece or lay in a ring-fence. They were interspersed with the acres of other villagers.

Two years ago, in the neighbourhood of Cirencester, I saw a man ploughing with eight oxen ; they did not plough four abreast, but only two abreast. In bygone days I have frequently seen ploughing done with four oxen at a time, but they were also two abreast.

OSWALD J. REICHEL. A la Ronde, Lympstone, Devon.

PENRITH (10 th S. i. 29, 97, 156, 275). MR. SCOTT writes of Penrith. Now we have no concern with this place (or Perest) in the quest for Penreth, and Mr. Watson, with whom I have for some years had a friendly correspondence, has clearly proved this was not the place from which John Byrde took his title. But he did not prove that it was Pentruth in the diocese of Llandaff there is no such place there. This name seems to have slipped into a letter from Mr. Pritchard, of Bangor.

I would refer your correspondents to an article of mine upon the subject that will probably appear in the forthcoming number of Archaeologia Cambrensis.

ALFRED HALL.

MR. SCOTT says : "It was decided to take the title of Penrith, on the supposition that the Cumberland town was the place meant by the 1534 Act. Bishop Goodwin stopped that," &c. In the article which Mr. George Watson contributed in July, 1898, to the Trans- actions of the C. and W. A. and A. Society (vol. xv. p. 303), he shows, it is true, that John Bird was bishop of some place in Wales ; but he also quotes from the 1534 Act the name "Pereth," and this, from a comparison of the spelling in the State