Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/153

 9* s. VL AUG. is, 1900.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 123 i.t locum qui usui esse potest, atque adeo in partitione arese in censum venit, posterius id, quod inutile eat, atque mensurate terrse summam non auget." I take the area in this passage to be the area of the house, on which ground rent or land tax was imposed in the name of the entire holding. On partition of the house and holding the land tax was originally appor- tioned by the bay, but afterwards—when the practice of apportioning holdings by the bay fell into disuse, and when the possession of a house had ceased to imply the possession of an aliquot part of arable land and com- munal rights, and therefore ceased to be of use in measuring acres or apportioning land tax—the word came to mean simply a house or measure, without reference to the thing measured. Not only was a man s house the measure of his arable land ; it was the source of all his communal rights. His house became the visible symbol or certificate which proved him to be a shareholder in a company of landowners, and a participator in the advan- tages arising from the possession of land, and it was as much tho measure_of the quan- tum of interest which he held in that com- oany as the share certificates of a modern investor are measure1* of the quantum of interest which he holds in any undertaking. In both cases the valuable interest consists, or consisted, of shares, not stock. The man whose name was on the register, so to speak, of the ancient landowning company must rither hold a unit or some multiple of that unit. If the capital of the company was divided into shares of six acres each, he must not hold less than that quantity, and those six acres must be measured by a house con xisting of one bay of 240 square feet, which formed, as it were, his share_ certificate ; and so in a modern company limited by shares of 100J. each a shareholder must not hold less than one share, and if he holds more, his quantum of interest must consist of a mul- tiple of that one share. You can divide the capital of the modern company by that one share of IOQL as you can divide the hide of 120 acres and any number of hides by six. If again the capital of the ancient company was divided into shares of ten acres each, a shareholder must hold not less than that quantity, and those ten acres must be measured by a house consisting of one bay of 400 square feet. And you can divide the hide by ten as well as by six. But the ownership of a house conferrec obligations on a man as well as rights. On the one hand it gave him, in addition to a share in the arable land of the community, a right to participate in common advantages, such as rights of pasturage and water, and •ights to cut wood for building purposes. On the other hand it subjected him to an amount of land tax, which was fixed by the number of his bays, and also to public duties. In a valuable essay* on 'Communal House Demolition' Mr. Round has discussed a remarkable custom found in " the ancient community of the Cinque Ports." It seems that the governing bodies of those towns consisted of a mayor and twelve jurats, and every person who might be elected a member of one of such bodies was bound to take office on pain of having his messuage de- molished. Mr. Round quotes the Custumal of Sandwich from Boys's 'Sandwich,' p. 431 : 'Si maior sic electuR officium suum recipere noluit, primq et secnndo et tercio monitns, tota communitas ibit ad capitale messuagium suum, ai habuerit proprium, et illud cum arm is omnimodo quo potent prosternat usque ad terram Similiter quicunque juratns fuerit electus, et jurare noluerit, simile judiciutn." Mr. Round says that this custom has not, so far as he knows, been found elsewhere in England, but observes that it was of wide- spread occurrence abroad, particularly in Flanders and Northern France. A similar custom prevailed, however, at Scarborough in the time of Henry III., when the bur- gesses of that town complained to the king against the Sheriff of Yorkshire. They said : " The Sheriff in person has come into harbour and wished to take all the herring from the fisher- men of Scarborough and others without market: and, if any one says to the contrary, he is threatened with imprisonment and to have his house burnt."t In a Derbyshire village where I spent some years of my boyhood a man who had beaten his wife, or had committed some other grave offence, was taken round the town in a cart, and finally soused in a horsepond. The culprit was followed by a crowd of men and boys, who made an excruciating din by rattling tin cans, and singing some lines beginning Ran, dan, dan.t With an old tin can. It now occurs to me that the first word of this doggerel may be ran. a house, as in ransack. In modern times the townsmen dare not demolish a man's house or burn it, so they seem to have given the rascal • ' Feudal England,' p. 552. t 'Yorkshire Inquisitions,' ed. by W. Browne, i. 122. t I am told that at Whitwell, in Derbyshire, they say " ran, tan."