i42 SERVILE BURDENS
the hated tallage swallowed up in this annual fixed charge he
could breathe the more easily, for another obvious sign of his
servitude had dropped away from him.
We may, perhaps, note here a special tallage that was at times
raised as part of the incoming—the joyeux avenement— of the
new lord. It was a custom particularly associated with eccle-
siastical manors: at Wynslowe 20 marks were exacted,1 at Otter-
ton 10 marks,2 at Tooting 4 marks,3 and on the manors of the
monks of Worcester, and the Bishop of Chichester the sum is not
stated,4 but on one Worcester manor it is said to be "secundum
quod ratio exigat".5 The Prior of Norwich, in 1471, had only
86 tenants at Martham but they had to pay .£20 on his incoming,
and the same sum was exacted in 1504 on the election of another
prior.
So far the actual account-rolls testify; but, on looking at Dugdale's
Monasticon we find that three other priors have come between, in
1480,1489 and 1504. If the rolls for these years existed and had been
searched, it is practically certain that they would show us similar
entries, and leave us to conclude that the Martham tenants had paid
this tax five times in a single generation, at whatsoever irregular
intervals it had pleased Providence to remove their former prior.6
The forced hospitality exacted from the manorial population
(the gite^ so common in France) seems to have been rare in
England. Vinogradoff quotes one example only, and gives no
other references. His one case dates from the mid-thirteenth
century and concerns the tenants of the Abbot of Osulveston in
Donington and Byker, who were
bound to receive their lord during one night and one day when he
comes to hold his court at their place. They find the necessary food
for him and for his men, provender for his horses, and so forth. If the
abbot does not come in person, the homage may settle about a commu-
tation of the duties with the steward or the sergeant sent for the
purpose. If he refuses to take money, they must bring everything in
kind.7
1 U.L.C. Wynslowe Rolls, 566. a Mow. Exon, 254 a.
3 Tooting Sec Roils, 248. * CaL Inquis. Misc. I, 64.
6 Wore. Priory Reg. cxvi n., 6383.
* Med. Village, 197. The years 1489, 1504 are corrected from those in
Dugdale by the recent work of H. W. Saunders, An Intro, to the Rolls of
Norwich Cathedral Priory, p. 190.
7 Villainage, 303.