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 THE ANCESTOR 255 unknown/ and that William had claimed the tenement under the will of William of Dunstaple, the testator, ' according to the custom of the city,' having power to bequeath it. As William could not produce the will, the escheator was ordered anew to give seisin to Hugh and his wife ' taking with him, if necessary, the posse comitatus of Hampshire ' to suppress resistance. The venerable institution of the posse still sur- vives in the United States, although it has long been obsolete, because needless, here. In this second document the tene- ment is described as held by the annual render of a ^ pellicium grisorum.' Now the Edward I. survey of the city, some thirty years before, speaks of ' a certain large house in which are sold linen cloths in Winchester,' and which 'King John gave to William his tailor {cissori suo) ' for an annual render of a grey pellicium} Following up this clue we discover on the charter rolls of John an enrolment of the actual charter by which the gift was made. The official calendar of these rolls compiled by the Record Commission describes the house as styled ' lanea selda,' as if the cloths sold there were of wool ; but on reference to the rolls themselves, that reading is found to be wrong. The charter was granted July 16, 1 2 1 5, when King John was staying at Fremantle (Frigid' Mantell'), then a royal residence in Hampshire, smarting under the humiliation he had suffered at the hands of his barons, and painfully short of money. It was perhaps this last consideration that led him to settle his tailor's claims by the grant of this house at Win- chester for an annual render so small as a ' pilch ' (a sort of cassock) lined with grey fur.^ John was not the only one of our kings who made such a grant to a royal tailor. The Essex manor of Wallbury in Great Hallingbury, which passed into the hands of the Crown ' when the Normans lost their lands ' (owing to the separation of England and Normandy), was in the hands of Roger de Ross * tailor {scissor) of our lord the King' in 1244-5 (^9 Hen. III.), being then held by him in chief for the annual ^ See the Victoria History of Hampshire, i. 531. ^ The actual charter runs thus : * Sciatis nos dedisse . . . Willelmo Cisori nostro et heredibus suis domum illam cum pertinenciis in civitate nostra Winton' que vocatur linea selda habendam et tenendam . . . reddendo inde annuatim nobis et heredibus nostris singulis annis pelicium grisium ' (Charter Roll, 17 John, pars, i, m. 8, No. 46). Henry Archbishop of Dublin is the first witness. R