she loved any man at all, unlawfully, she had to
pay a fine, or "merchet," for "the redemption
of her blood." If she was a she-villein entire,
she had to pay five shillings and fourpence, for
right or punishment—as the case might be; if
the daughter of a cottager, half that sum. No
villein could marry, put his children to school,
send his son into the church, or sell an ox fatted
by himself, without the leave and allowance of
the lord; leave and allowance always expressed
by the inevitable fine or " merchet" of so much
solid silver. Grimston, in Norfolk, had rather
a hard custom with its villeins, called "Love-
bone." Those with a horse and cart paid their
lord "one day's journey of barley-seed time,"
receiving three-halfpence for breakfast, in
return; and those with cows on the common paid
him so many days' work in harvest, having, at
three o'clock, flesh to eat, and ale to drink, and
getting three loaves every evening. But the
unfortunate villein's own harvest must rot on
the ground while he is husbanding the lord's,
and eating his daily dole of flesh and bread.
These are only one or two of the very many
instances of oppression and cruelty under which
the villeins laboured in the good old days when
every man was brave and every woman chaste—
at least, according to the saying of the lovers
of the past.

The old Welsh had some curious customs
respecting that last quality in their women
worth noting. If a maiden who had loved
not wisely but too well was deserted by her
seducer, and made complaint thereof, a young
three-year-old bull, with its tail well greased,
was pushed through a wicker door; if the
deserted maiden could hold the bull by its
greased tail while two men goaded it on to
make it as mad and wild as might be, she kept
it as some kind of compensation for her faithless
lover, also as a sort of acknowledgment that a
lass of her strength deserved a better fate; if
the bull got away from her, she had only the
grease on her hands for her pains. If the wife
of a Welsh prince had a lover, and the lover
was found out, there was no blood and thunder
in the case, and no formal divorce court, but
the man was adjudged to pay the injured prince
a gold cup and cover, as broad as the king's face
and as thick as a ploughman's nail who has
ploughed nine years; a rod of gold as tall as
the king, and as thick as his little finger; a
hundred cows for every "cantref" he ruled over;
and a white bull, with two different coloured
ears, for every hundred cows. And by other
laws and enactments did Wales strive to keep
the public morals pure on that all-important
point of women and fidelity; but these two
instances are sufficient as specimens of the spirit
and direction of the rest.

Rochford, Essex, used to hold a Lawless
Court. This was a yearly assemblage of all the
suitors and tenants of the estate, who met the
steward at cock-crowing on King's Hill, having
no light and no fire, obliged to speak in whispers,
and to write without pen and ink, and only
with coals; and "he that owes suit and service
thereto, and appears not, forfeits to his lord
double his rent for every hour of absence."
Kidlington, Oxford, had a different kind of custom.
Here, a fat lamb was set adrift among
the maids of the town, the maids having their
thumbs tied behind them; and whosoever
caught the fat lamb in her mouth, had part of
it tor her pains, and was called for the day
"The Lady of the Lamb." And there was a
"morisco dance" of men, and another of
women; and the lamb was roasted and eaten
for supper, and the day was "spent in dancing,
mirth, and merry glee." At Coleshill,
Warwick, if the young men could catch a live hare
before ten o'clock on Easter Monday, and carry
it to the rector's, he was bound to give them a
hundred eggs and a calf's head for breakfast,
and a groat in money. On the first coming of
our lord the king to Rochester, the sealers of
his writs ought to have four loaves of esquires'
bread, and four of grooms' bread; four
gallons of convent ale, and four of common ale;
four dishes of convent meat, and four of
common meat; to wit, twenty-four herrings, and
twenty-four eggs; seven small bushels of
provender, and eight halfpence to buy hay. All
these things ought the sealers of the king's
writs to have, when the lord his majesty rode
into Rochester town for the first time. Among
other strange customs was the Minstrel's Court
at Tutbury, which got abolished because of the
abominable licentiousness to which it gave rise;
also, the apple-pies and furmenty of Hutton-
Conyers, York, where each shepherd brought a
spoon, and he who was spoonless had to lie all
his length along "and sup the furmenty with his
face to the pot or dish;" also, the "picked
bones " of Ratby, Leicester, and the pins
which every Roman Catholic flung once a year
into the well at North Lees, near Hathersedge;
also, the odd idea of adornment which the Knutsford
people had, when they strewed their doorstep
with brown sand, and made thereon
patterns of scrolls and crosses, &c., in white sand,
adding thereto also "the flowers of the season,"
on the marriage of their friends; also, the still
odder custom in the Middleton Hundred, when
a man who had made himself the father of an
unlawful child, forfeited all his goods and
chattels to the king. And then there was the
slightly tragic "Burning of the Hill" at
Mendippe, which was thus: Whenever one of the
miners had stolen his comrades' tools, or clothes,
or other things, he was shut up in a very slightly-
built hut, which was then surrounded with dry
fern, furze, &c., and set alight; if he could, the
man was free to break his way out of the hut,
but must never come to work again on the
Mendippe Hills. He had his choice between
death by burning, or banishment and starvation.
Grave respectable Magdalen College paid
yearly a certain sum, "pro mulieribus hockantibus"
on some of its manors, which bit of choice
dog Latin meant, that on a certain Monday in
the year the men "hocked" the women, and,
on the Tuesday following, the women "hocked"
the men:  that is, stopped the way with ropes,