Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/381

 12 S. X. AiniLf:'2. 1922.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 311 "GRAVE" AND " GRESSOM." (12 S. x. 246.) " GRAVE," " greave " and " reeve " are all derived from the A.S. gerefa, and are frequently used for the bailiff of a manor. The bailiffs of the various manors within the extensive Honour of Clitheroe are still called greaves, and anyone" happening to be in Burnley, Accrington, or Haslingden about this time of the year would see notices exhibited, signed by the greave of the local manor, giving notice of the holding of the Easter Hallmote Court. Dr. Wm. Farrer, in 'The Court Rolls of the Honour of Clitheroe,' vol. i., p. 1 (note) (Manchester, Emmott and Co., Ltd., 1897), says : The Greave was elected by the tenants of the Manor from among those of their own number having most substance and ability. The liability to serve this office was attached to the more im- portant holdings or messuages, called Greaveships. The following extract from the Court Roll of the Hallmote Court for the Manor of Chatburn, Worston, and Pendleton of Feb. 7, 1376/7, printed in the above volume, will illustrate the subject : John de Cumberhalgh is elected Greave of Pen- hilton, and sworn. John Tyde is elected Greave of Chatteburn, and sworn. The town [villa] of Worston is amerced xl<J because it has no Greave there, nor was willing to elect one. William Nowell and others his neighbours of the town of Worston complain against Adam de Dounom in that the inhabitants [commit nitas] of the town of Worston elected the said Adam to serve in the office of Greave for this year, for a certain tenement which John Sprot and John Tole lately held in the said town of Worston, to their injury xs. The defendant says that he ought not to hold the said office until a term of two years shall have been fully completed, and he prays to have an inquiry. The jury say that he is not guilty. Therefore [plaintiffs are] in the mercy of the Court vjd. John Coke is elected Greave of Worston, and sworn. " Gressom " is evidently a variant of " gersom." It is the A.S. gaersuma, which, ac- cording to Bosworth, signifies "store, riches, treasure, a premium, fine, an earnest." Jamieson (' Dictionary of the Scottish Lan- guage,' Edinburgh, 1818) has : Oersome, gressoume, a sum paid to a landlord by a tenant, at the entry of a lease, or by a new heir to a lease or feu. Maigne d'Arnis, in his abridgment of Du Cange, has : Gersuma, Apud forenses Anglicos usurpatum legitur, pro fine, seu pecunia data in pactionem, el rei emptao vel conductae compensationem. Uncle in venditionum formulis, et locationum charti.s, haec aut similia verba pro more inserta : Pro tot solidis vel tot libris in gersumam soltis vel j traditis. Gersuma praeterea pro delicti compen- satione interdum capitur. In the Glossary to ' Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors,' by W. C. Hazlitt, w& Gersuma, a fine ... I suppose it to be a ! fine for a renewal of a lease, for I take it to be I the same with the word in Scott's ' Practice and Law,' called grassum, which has the above signifi- i cation. SIR PATRICK WALKER. I have some rolls and other papers I relating to the Court Baron of the Manor of i Gisburn in the West Riding of Yorkshire in i the seventeenth century, from which it appears that on a change of tenancy the new tenant paid four pence for being recognized as tenant and having his name entered on the Court Roll. This fee is some- times called " an alienation groat," but at a Court Baron held on Nov. 12, 1669, the jury presented that several persons (named) I and every of them ought to be inserted in this I Court Roll, and for the same each of them according j to the custom of the Manor to pay under the name i of Alienationis Gersum iiij d. " Running gressom," referred to by SIB ALFRED ROB BINS, is evidently a payment made by the customary tenant to the Lord of the Manor every five years, in addition ! to the quit or manorial rent paid by him
 * find :
 * yearly, and also in addition to the fine which

I he had to pay on entry. This may be illus- trated from the Customs of the Manor of Ingleton, Yorkshire, as settled by a decree of the Lord Keeper Pickering, June 23, 34 Elizabeth, by which every customary tenant is " for fines and groshams " at the end of every seven years to pay to the Lord of the Manor two years' old rent of his customary tenements over and besides the yearly ancient rent thereof which is to be paid as it grows due, which two years' rent at the end of every seven years for fines and grossons shall be paid in three years after the end of every the same seven years by three equal parts and portions ; and by the same decree, on every change of tenancy, except to a child or next heir of the last tenant, 15 years' customary rent had to be paid as a fine, while the next heir was to pay, over and above one penny for his admit- tance, seven years' customary rent as a fine. Similar payments for fines on change of tenants and the payment of two years' customary rent " for a running fine or gressome every seven years " were fixed by