Page:Select historical documents of the Middle Ages.djvu/122

102 lower one is written thus: "this same sheriff renders account for the farm of purprestures and escheats; namely for 40£ from this and for 20£ from that"; and then afterwards, according as, from the roll of the itinerant justices, it has previously been put down in the yearly one, "total 100£." Then, at the end of that line where the total is, is written: in the treasury 20£ in so many tallies, and owes four times 20£; or "paid in the treasury and is quit." But thou wilt learn the order of writing these things better by ocular demonstration than by a verbal description, however detailed.

D. What these escheats and trespass-lands are, and for what reason they flow into the fisc, I cannot see unless thou wilt explain it more fully.

M. It happens sometimes through the negligence of the sheriff or his servants, or also on account of a season of warfare continued for a long time, that those dwelling near the estates which are called crown-lands, usurp for themselves some portion of them and join it to their own possessions. When, therefore, the itinerant justices, through the oath of lawful men. shall have seized these, they shall be appraised separately from the farm of the county, and handed over to the sheriffs that they may answer for them separately; and these we call purprestures or trespass-lands. And when they are seized they are taken, as has been said, from their possessors, and henceforth go to the fisc. But if he from whom the trespassland is taken be the author of the deed, then, in addition, unless the king share him, he shall be pecuniarily most severely punished; but if he be not the author, but the heir of the author, then the revocation of that estate alone suffices for punishment. From which, indeed, as from many other things, the mercy of the king is proved; inasmuch as so enormous an excess of the father is not punished on the son, who, until the inquest was made, was enriched at a loss to the public power.

Escheats, to proceed, are commonly called what falls to the fisc when those who are tenants in chief of the king die, and there does not remain an heir by blood. Concerning these, moreover, together with the purprestures, the accounts are made under one rubric; so, however, that the