Page:The Victoria History of the County of Surrey Volume 3.djvu/284

 A HISTORY OF SURREY

��at death of a tenant. Lastly, they were not to cut down oaks in Shellwood without his permission.

The men of Shellwood allowed that they owed for the farm of the land 5/. per virgate, or loos, for 5 hides. They said that when the prior had need of their aid for the requirements of the church they gave it freely, not by reason of their villeinage, but rather from courtesy. They allowed the claims for pannage and Peter's pence, but said that they came to the court of Ewell as free men, at the election of the prior's bailiff, to act as jurors.

The jurors for the inquest denied the prior's claim for work from his tenants in harvest time, and they stated that the brushwood cut down by the men should be taken by them over the hill called Bridelcumbe. The other services were allowed to the prior. The men of Shellwood were said to owe tallage whenever the men of Ewell did so, and it was not voluntary, but compulsory ; they were also required to plough the lands of Ewell if the prior wished it, bringing their own horses and ploughs.

In 1311 John de Dene, a tenant of the prior in Shellwood, was remitted certain of these services in consideration of an increase on his annual assize rent of 8</., payable at four terms of the year."

In 1316 the men of Shellwood accused the prior of exacting from them other services than those which they were required to perform. The prior, however, said that he exacted no more than those allowed to his predecessor in the suit of 1223, and judgement was given in his favour. 18

It may be that the memory of an ancient dispute caused the careful insertion in the conveyance from Southwell to Lechford in 1 547 of the words ' with the bondmen and their families." The liberation of the tenants from the essential villein service of attend- ance at the bedrip probably means that in 1223 it was recognized that they were not technically vlllani, had no share in the common fields, but were yet servile tenants.

Free warren in all their lands of Merton, Ewell, Kingswood and Shellwood was granted to the prior and convent in 1252.*" In a plea of 'quo warranto' in 1279 the prior claimed assize of bread and ale and gallows on the ground that Henry II had granted them Shellwood with soc, sac, &c., and quittance of shires and hundreds, and that these liberties had been confirmed by Richard I. 10

The capital messuage of Shellwood was separated from the manor itself during the l8th century. Ac- cording to Manning, Ambrose Browne obtained an Act of Parliament in 1712 enabling him to sell a manor in Kent and the capital messuage of Shellwood, which was therefore vested in Jemmett Raymond,

���second husband of Elizabeth, widow of George Browne." From Raymond it passed, in 1755, to John Winter," who conveyed it in 1781 to Richard Simpson.* 3 It passed in 1796 to his nephew Corne- lius Cayley, and was sold three years later to the Duke of Norfolk," and thus became reunited to the manor. It is not now standing (see above), but the farm next to it is of about 1 7th-century date, and perhaps had superseded the original manor-house before the separation from the manor.

The messuage and farm of LEIGH PLACE was the residence of the Ardernes in the I5th century. 34

John Arderne, who was high sheriff of Surrey in 1432, was of Leigh Place. By his will, which was proved in 1449, he directed that if he died at or near Leigh he should be buried in the church there. His son John inherited the estate, and was in turn succeeded by his son Richard, 36 who died in 1499 seised of 3 messuages, 255 acres of land, &c., in Leigh. Richard Arderne by his will bequeathed all his lands to his wife Joan, re- quiring her 'to fynd an honest pryst to pray for me & all my friends & all cristyn sowlys deuryng her lyf ' ; after her death his step- brother John Holgrave was to find the priest, who was to receive an annual sum of 6 I 3*. 4^." There is apparently no record of any such chantry in Leigh Church. Leigh Place soon after became the property of the Dudleys. 38 By an Act of 1512, reversing the attainder of Edward Dudley, John Dudley his son, subsequently Duke of Northumberland, was restored to his father's lands. 39 He sold the estate of Leigh Place to Edward Shelley of Findon in Sussex in 1530.' The deed recites that in 1527 Sir John Dudley had conveyed the manor of Findon, which had be- longed to his father, to Edward Shelley, that Shelley had agreed to re-sell it to Dudley, in consideration of which sale Dudley agreed to sell to Shelley ' a messuage called Lye Place 41 with appurtenances in the parish of Lye, Surrey.' In an account made in 1534, of defaults of bridges in Surrey, a reference occurs to ' the bridge before Mr. Shellie's place, Lye.' " Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Shelley and niece of Edward Shelley, married Sir Roger Copley of Gatton," and in 1540 Edward Shelley and Anne Cobbe (possibly his daughter-in-law) made a settlement of Leigh Place on them." The property is described as a messuage, 200 acres of land, 40 acres of meadow,

��ARDIKNI. Argent a fate cheeky or and azure.

��V Cott. MS. Cleop. C vii, foU 158.

88 Abbrev. Plac. (Rec. Com.), 325. " Cal. of Chart. 1226-57, p. 391.


 * > Plac. de Quo War. (Rec. Com.), 739,

748.

81 Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surr. ii, 1 80 i Berry, Surr. Gen. ; Stat. of the Realm, x, 1005.

89 Manning and Bray, Hist, of Surr. ii, i So.

Feet of F. Surr. East 21 Geo. III.

84 See n. 32.

84 Surr. Arch. Coll. xi, 141 et seq. ; Cal. Pat. 1429-36, p. 380. It has been stated that the family of de Braose, or Brewes, held Leigh Place in the I3th and I4th centuries (Brayley, Hist, of Surr.

��iv, 282). There does not seem to be much documentary evidence in proof of this assertion. However, John on of John de Braose died in 1358 seised of a tene- ment in Leigh called Ernesheued, consist- ing of and a garden worth lid. and 40 acres worth 201. (Chan. Inq. p.m. 31 Edw. Ill [ist nos.j, no. 49), and as the Braoses were succeeded by the Ardernes in other places, this holding may be the Leigh Place estate. More- over, the arms of the Cookseys, who were descended from the Braoses, used to be in the parish church, and the Cookseys and the Ardernes were both Warwickshire families.

88 Chan. Inq. p.m. 15 Hen. VII,

210

��no. 101 ; P.C.C. 5 Moone ; Surr. Arch. Coll. xi, 141.

w P.C.C. 5 Moone.

88 For a possible connexion between Ardernes and Dudley*, see Surr. Arch. Coll. xi, 149.

89 Stat. of the Realm, iii, 42.

40 Surr. Arch. Coll. xi, 150 (quoting from deed in possession of owners of the estate).

41 Also Flanchford in Reigate, and Hartswood in Buckland.

L. and P. Hen. Vlll, vii, 42.

49 Vitit. Surr. (Harl. Soc. xliii), 121 j Berry, Surr. Gen. 85 ; Surr. Arch. Coll. xi.

44 Chan. Inq. p.m. (Ser. 2), ccx, 85.

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