Life in a Medieval Village (33 page)

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Photographs are the authors’ unless otherwise credited.

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Formerly Huntingdonshire, until the redrawing of county lines in 1974.

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One expert dates them later, c. 1100.

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Conversion among variant acres was none too easy for medieval mathematics, which lacked plural fractions. The author of one treatise, attempting to express the quantity of one acre, three and nine sixteenths rods, gave it as “one acre and a half and a rod and a half and a sixteenth of a rod.”

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Surnames are spelled in a variety of ways in the records—for example, Prudhomme, Prodhomme, Prudomme, Prodom, Produmie, Prodome, Produme, Prodomme; Saladin, Saladyn, Saldy, Saldyn, Saldin, Salyn, Saln; Blaccalf, Blacchalf, Blacchelf, Blacchal, Blakchalf. We have chosen one spelling and used it throughout.

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He apparently traced his family back to a “Richard son of Reginald,” a free tenant in the survey of 1160, to whom Abbot Walter had granted two virgates of land formerly held by Thuri Priest. Richard may have inherited another virgate from his father, and the family seems to have acquired three virgates belonging to another landholder in the survey, one Reiner son of Ednoth.
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In a survey of 1218, “John son of John of Elton” is listed as holding a hide of land “of the lord abbot of Ramsey.”

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The Hundred Rolls of 1279, seventeen manorial court rolls (1279-1 342), and ten manorial accounts (1286-1346).

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Likc all other excerpts in Middle English in this hook, this is translated into modern English.

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Such as the Last Judgment discovered in the church at Broughton, currently heing restored.