170 FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
separately farmed in his grandfather’s time ; Orford, Grimsby,
Scarborough, and Newbury were additions to the class.
Southampton affords a striking contrast to London in the
inability or unwillingness of most of its farmers to meet their
full liabilities even after the original farm of £300 blanch had
been reduced by a third. One of its early farmers in this reign
was the sheriff of the county (1156-57),1 another, Emma,
viscountess of Rouen (1158-63). When she resigned the farm,
her debt amounted to no less than £1423 gs. 2d. blanch.2
Two years later it was made payable in the king’s chamber and
the item disappears from the Pipe Rolls.3 The three reeves
of the town who succeeded her for nearly four years were little
more successful, retiring with arrears of over £530. They
declined responsibility for them, calling the king to warrant
that they had not held the town at farm 4 and, however this
may have been, the debt does not appear again on the rolls.
Their contention, no doubt, was that they had acted as
custodes or keepers only. Coupled with the absence of any
record of the acquisition of the farm by the burgesses, this
leaves no doubt that the reeves acted as officers of the king,
not of the town.
With Richard de Limesey as reeve and farmer, the farm
was reduced to £200 blanch.5 Yet after a little more than
five years’ tenure, Limesey,s arrears amounted to over £457 β
and thirteen years later he still owed nearly £400.7 Robert
de St. Laurence, one of the three reeves who first took the farm,
did better alone and so did his wife Cecily, first as his deputy
and afterwards on her own account. But Gervase de Hampton,
who succeeded her in 1181, owed over £456 at the end of the
reign, which he was allowed to wipe off in ago by a payment .
of 200 marks.8 It is significant that in the hands of keepers
for the first nine months of this year, the town yielded a
revenue to the Crown equivalent to not more than £130
per annum.®
ɪ P.R. 3 Hen. II, p. 107.
2 Ibid, g Hen. II, p. 56. For the viscountess, who also farmed Rouen,
see Tout, Chapters in Administrative History, i. 106-7, nι-12. She answered
for the debt on the farm of 1157-58 at Michaelmas xι59 as well as for the
farm of 1158-59 (P.R. 5 Hen. II, p. 50), but William Trentegernuns is
given as the farmer of the former year incurring the debt (ibid. 4. Hen. II,
P- i7≡)-
3 Ibid, и Hen. II, p. 44. 4 Ibid. 13 Hen. II, p. 194.
5 Ibid. 14 Hen. II, p. 189. 6 Ibid. 19 Hen. II, p. 53.
’ Ibid. 32 Hen .II, p. 180. The debt then disappears from the rolls.
8 Ibid. 2 Rich. I, p. 6.
’ From 1191 it was farmed again, at the low figure of ^ιo6 13s. 4<f., but
this was afterwards raised once more to £200.
REVOCABLE GRANTS OF FIRMA BURGI 171
Winchester, which, unlike her neighbour, had been for-
merly in the corpus of the county, differed from her also in
being farmed by the sheriff, except in ɪ ɪ55—57-1 The sheriff’s
allowance in the county farm being £80 blanch and his farm
of the city £142 12S. ∆td. blanch, one motive at least for its
separate farming is obvious. Richard fitz Turstin, who was
removed from the sheriffwick in 1170, left in debt on the city
farm to an amount between £100 and £200, but normally there
were no heavy deficits.
Of Northampton nothing need be said here, as its burgesses
received a grant of the farm before the end of the reign which
is dealt with later. For a similar reason Grimsby is omitted
here.
Dover affords a rather remarkable instance of the per-
sistence of a farm fixed before 1086. It had been higher in
Henry Γs time, but from the beginning of his grandson’s
reign its amount was £54 as in Domesday Book and the shares
of the king and the earl were still formally discriminated, the
latter belonging to the escheated fief of Bishop Odo of Bayeux.
The only difference was that the old king’s share which in
1086 had been payable in pennies of twenty to the ounce was
now required to be paid blanch. Down to 1161, the farmer
was the financier William Cade, afterwards the sheriff, except
for eighteen months in 1183-85 when the keep of the castle
was being built at great expense and the reeves of the town,
who were overseers and paymasters of the work, were
appointed keepers of the borough issues.2 Earlier in the
reign, the account had been sometimes in arrears, Cade paying
up for two and a half years in 1157 and nine years passing
without account up to Michaelmas 1173.
Colchester was still farmed as in 1130 at jΓ40 blanch, by
Richard de Luci3 to 1178, by the town reeves from that year.4
The farm of Orford first appears on the Pipe Rolls in 1164.5
The town was farmed by the sheriff, except in 1173-75 when
it was in the hands of two keepers, in 1175-76 when it was
farmed by one of them with a merchant and two clerks, in
1179-80 when the farmer was a sheriff’s son and in 1187-89
when he was an ex-sheriff. Beginning at £24 [by tale], the
farm was raised to 40 marks in 1167-68 and to £40 in 1171-72,
1 When it was farmed by Stigand, perhaps the reeve of the city.
2 PR- 3o Hen. II, p. 150 ; 31 Hen. II, p. 233.
2 He was also sheriff in 1155-56.
But see the appendix to this article, below, p. 188.
P-R- 10 Hen. II, p. 35. Without allowance in county farm.