This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...to their next-of-kin, and had had to pay heriots to the Lord of the Manor. Some of their husbands had been free tenants (Liberi homines) and some were bondmen (nativi Domini), who might have become manumitted, but whose rights were almost non-existent. The loss of their husbands had given them no right to marry again, ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 Excerpt: ...to their next-of-kin, and had had to pay heriots to the Lord of the Manor. Some of their husbands had been free tenants (Liberi homines) and some were bondmen (nativi Domini), who might have become manumitted, but whose rights were almost non-existent. The loss of their husbands had given them no right to marry again, while it had deprived some of them of their tenements, i.e., turned them into destitute persons. The Lord designed forcibly to do away with this scandalous state of things by granting that in future a widow should be enabled to marry again with whom she willed, and as often as she willed, and also that the heriot instead of being taken from her on succession should be forgone to her; that she should retain her tenement; and that finally after her decease the tenement or holding, although she may have married sundry times, should by right descend to her next heir. This enactment seems, by the light of the customs in force in Elizabeth's later day, to have ordered that the wife of any tenant on the decease of her husband became admitted to her free-bench (i.e., one-third annual value) in the Lord's Manor Court, by the payment of one penny, and re-marriage on her part did not cancel her right to it, but the privilege continued during her life. It is not difficult to appreciate the great step in advance made by this enactment alone, which probably caused Painswick tenants to be envied by the neighbours in many other manors. The next point, constituting another grievance, done away with by the Lord, relates to herbage and pannage on the common lands, (woods and hills) and the waste-land of the Manor, upon which the tenants fattened their geese and pigs and horses, but only on payment for a license to the Lord. As pork and bacon were important foods...
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