THE STEWARD'S COMING 161

many things the peasant would gladly have had forgotten. Every
leaf of the parchment roll was covered with entries which con-
cerned him and his fellows, and the clerk and his master, the
steward, seemed to have every detail of them at their finger-ends.
So he watched as the little cortege rode past him up to the great
house, which had been cleaned and prepared for the steward's
coming by one of the female serfs, who did this and gathered
bundles of rushes to strew in the rooms as part of her services,
as on a manor of the Bishop of Chichester.1 There he and his
servants would spend the night, sometimes at the cost of the lord,
sometimes at that of the peasants. The customals give us a few
details of the latter practice. On a Lincoln manor, for example, the
villagers have to find all sufficient necessaries for one entire day and
the following night — food, drink, hay, fodder — everything, down
to the candles that flickered over the last potations, is mentioned.2
At Amberley, in Sussex, the tenants had to provide counterpanes
and sheeting for guests at the hall, but if guests were quartered
out in their houses in the vill, then only house room and beds
(hospicium et lectum) and no more might be required.3 When
things were not going well between the lord or the steward and
the peasantry these obligations seemed particularly onerous, and
on the manors of the Prior of Durham the serfs showed great un-
willingness to provide beds for the steward's servants as custom
demanded,4 and could not be found when they were wanted to
carry his victuals and impedimenta from one manor to another.5
Generally speaking, however, the costs of the steward's advent
were a charge on the manor, and are duly returned in the
accounts at the end of the year, when the tallies given by the
steward are duly produced by the reeve and checked against the
account. For example, on a Norfolk manor in 1342, the tally re-
corded the consumption of i £ bushels of wheat; 2 bushels, i peck
of oats; i bushel of barley; 2 bushels of malt; i capon; i hen; as
well as other things costing is.

1 Sussex Rec. Soc. xxxi, 51.
* Rentals and Surveys, Roll 403; and compare Crondal Records, izS (1287).
8 Sussex Rec. Soc. xxxi, 53.
* Durham Halmote Rolls, l, 72, 101, 140, 146.
5 Ibid, i, 125, 144-
* Manor of Hindringham. Information supplied by Mr W. Hudson and
Dr H. W. Saunders.
BL II