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Book One. 750​-​1539

Chapter Two
FEUDAL LIFE

The earliest record which gives one the best impression, both of the parish and of the life which the parishioners led, is given by the Domesday survey "The abbot himself holds Sandridge, it answers for ten hides. There is land for thirteen ploughs. in the demesne are three hides and there are two ploughs, and a third could be made. There, twenty-six Villeins have ten ploughs. There are two cottagers and one serf, and one mill worth ten shillings. Meadow for two ploughs. Pasture for the cattle. Woodland for three hundred pigs. Its total value is eighteen pounds; and the same in the time of King Edward. This manor laid and lies in the demesne of the church of St. Alban." Such is the description of Sandridge in the year of our Lord 1086, the abbot, Paul de Caen, being the fourteenth. A hide was a measure of land as much as would support one free family and dependants, perhaps about 120 acres.¹ It seems that the home farm, worked by the abbey, consisted of three hides with two ploughs, and that the twenty-six tenant farmers had seven hides and ten ploughs between them. The cottagers were perhaps small holders and the serf a man whose service was attached to the soil. it is evident that the area of ten hides does not include the woodland, and probably not the pasture or meadow either. The word hide survives in our parish in the names of Beech Hyde, Simonshyde and perhaps Cheapside.

The feudal overlord of the manor was entitled to many privileges and dues. Thus from the abbey records one learns that Geoffrey de Gorham, sixteenth abbot of St Albans during the period 1119-46, gave all the cheeses and gifts which were due annually, from the manor of Sandridge to the kitchener of the abbey.² Extortion was not uncommon. The thirteenth century opened with the reign of John, who signed Magna Carta in 1215 and died in the following year. He required money for the French wars and also for the wars against his own nobles, and in 1209 he went about extorting money from the monasteries, one of the victims being Robert de la Marc of Sandridge, who had to pay thirteen marks.³

Later in the same century we have the remarkable case of William Merun who fought for four years against Roger de Nortone, twenty-fourth abbot of St. Albans. Merun claimed to be a freeman, and he therefore declined to perform the usual services appropriate to a Villein. But the abbot insisted that he really was a Villein and proceeded bit by bit to confiscate his property. On the Monday before Palm Sunday A.D.1270, he sent four servants, John of Walkern, Galfrld of Sandruge, Henry of Tyngewik, and William le Baker, who seized three oxen and four horses and drove them off to the abbot’s manor of Sandridge. William promptly complained, but he got no redress; instead the same men came in August and seized two more oxen and a cow, and in the late spring of 1271 they came and look four more oxen and four more horses. Still William Merun would not give in and admit that he was a Villein, so on a Sunday in August the same men made a raid on his house, broke the doors and windows, seized the furniture, arrested Merun himself and placed him in the Sandridge lock-up. The arrest was reported to the Viscount of Hertford who came in person to see Merun and bailed him out. William appealed to King Henry III and he claimed the return of all his animals, £40 damages for their seizure, and a further £100 damages for the attack on his house and person.

In due course the King ordered the travelling judges to try the case, and so at last it came to court. The abbot disclaimed any responsibility for the arrest of William’s person, saying that he was not even in England when it happened, but as regards the seizure of the animals, he said it was justified by the fact that William would not perform the labours of a Villein. William on the other hand said that he was a Freeman and that he would establish his freedom before Mr. Richard Stanes, one of the King’s Judges, by the witness of soldiers, lawyers, and other Freemen. "I hold my land free" he said, "but I am willing to pay five shillings and three pence per year to be free and quiet from all secular service."

Both parties agreed that it was simply a question of fact. Was Merun a Villein or a Freeman? Merun felt sure that if a proper search was made in the record of the rolls, his name would be found among those of the Freemen. Time was allowed for this search and the case was again brought up at Canterbury on 3rd February 1273. When the time came poor William had failed to establish his freedom and so he did not put in an appearance at Canterbury, and the abbot’s attorney triumphantly claimed him as the abbot’s Villein. But the new King Edward I wanted to make quite sure that his claim was really just, and he ordered the minutes of the case to be sent to him.

Footnotes

1. Concise Oxford Dictionary.↩︎
2. Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani 793 - 1411. 1. 74. Compiled by Thomas Walshingham. Three volumes.↩︎
3. Gesta Abbatum Monasterii Sancti Albani 793 - 1411. 1. 297. Compiled by Thomas Walshingham. Three volumes.↩︎