172
FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
reduced to 40 marks again for three years (1175-78) and
then restored to £40 at which it remained until it disappeared
from the rolls in 1189-90. In the two years when it was in
custody, it returned under £23. When the fee farm was
granted in 1256,1 it was fixed at £30 by tale. Extrafirmam was
a ship custom which sank from £64 in 1157 to nothing from
1186 onwards.
Scarborough, like Orford, was first farmed separately in
1163-64.2 The farm, which was held by the sheriff, began
at £20 (tale), was raised to £30 in 1168-69 and to £34 in 1173,
at which it remained until the end of the reign. At Michaelmas
1189 the sheriff accounted for £33 by tale and an increment
(amount unstated),3 but the farm does not appear on the rolls
of the three following years. Newbury, in Berkshire, is not
mentioned in this connexion until 1180, when an addition to
the roll records that Godfrey and Richard de Niweberia
accounted for a full year’s farm at Easter 118l, the amount
being £49 (tale).4 At Michaelmas 1181, therefore, they
accounted for half a year only. Godfrey and Simon (with
Richard from 1185) afterwards account until in 1187 the
entry disappears. The borough seems to have been only
temporarily in the hands of the Crown. It was on the fief
of the count of Perche.
For a moment, at the beginning of the reign, Yarmouth
and Norwich were separately farmed, Yarmouth in 1155-56
by the sheriff of Norfolk for £40/ and Norwich in 1157 by the
sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk for six months at the rate of
£108 per annum.6
Apart from Lincoln, the first town allowed by Henry II
to farm itself was Wallingford, which had been farmed in-
dependently of the county by Brian fitz Count in Ii30. For
their services to Henry in securing the crown its burgesses
received a charter of liberties in 1155,7 and during the next
seven years they or persons who doubtless were their reeves
1 Ballard and Tait, British Borough Charters, ii. 316.
3 P.R. 10 Hen. II, p. 12. Without allowance in the county farm.
3 It was an addition of the same amount in John's grant of the farm
to the burgesses (1201) " quamdiu nobis bene Servierint ” (B.B.C. i. 226).
4 Ibid. 27 Hen. II, p. 142. 5 Ibid. 2 Hen. II, p. 8.
6 Ibid. 3 Hen. II, p. 76. In these and similar cases above the sheriff
received no corresponding allowance in the county farm. The separate
borough farm was in effect an increment on that.
’Corrected from 1156, Ballard’s date, given in the article as first
printed. See appendix below, p. 189. For the charter, see Gross, Gild
Merchant, ii. 244 f,
REVOCABLE GRANTS OF FIRMA BURGI 173
made fitful and very unsuccessful efforts to pay a farm of
£80 blanch increased in 1159 by £$ tale in lieu of a paleum.
For the year 1163—64, the king by writ reduced their farm to
£30 by tale.1 Then for fourteen years the borough disappears
from the Pipe Rolls. Not until the exchequer audit at
Michaelmas 1178 is any explanation forthcoming. It appears
that Henry by a charter, which must have been granted in
1164, had reduced the original farm to £40 burnt and weighed
(arsas et pensatas), but the officials of the exchequer had pedan-
tically refused to allow them to account because this technical
expression for the assay (or deduction in lieu thereof) was no
longer in use,2 and the term blanched (blancas) should have
been employed. They now accounted for arrears amounting
tɑ £560 and paɪð °ff rather less than half. Next year, “ in
the Treasury after the Exchequer audit,” the deficit was
apparently wiped out by order of the king.® For some reason
unexplained no further account was rendered until 1183
when it closed with a debt of over £50 on the preceding three
and a half years.4 This delay and the transference of the
town for the rest of the reign to the keeper of the honour of
Wallingford, who was never able to obtain more than about
£18 in any year, may suggest that there was something more
than the pedantry of the exchequer behind the earlier and
heavier arrears.
The burgesses of Grimsby had a much briefer tenure of
their farm. For four years down to 1160 the borough was
farmed by Ralph, son of Dreu, of Tetney, Holton, and Humber-
stone, for £111, but this was probably, as usual, excessive;
he ran up a large debt 5 (more than half of which was wiped
off and the rest his sons paid in birds (aves) eight years later),
and in 1160-61 the men of Grimsby accounted for three months’
farm and paid off the greater part of it.6 In the following year,
the farm reverted to the sheriff who retained it until John’s
reign.7 The burgesses got a fee farm grant in 1227, amended
in 1256.8
Gloucester was the next borough to secure control of its
own farm, but only for a decade. At Michaelmas 1165
Osmund the reeve accounted for half a year’s farm at the rate
ɪ P.R. 10 Hen. II, p. 43. See also the next reference.
2 Ibid. 24 Hen. II, p. 99. » Ibid. 29 Hen. II, pp. 138-9.
* Ibid. » Ibid. 6 Hen. II, p. 45.
‘ Ibid. 7 Hen. II, p. 17. Cf. p. 15. 7 Rot. Litt. Claus, i. 358a.
* B.B.C. ɪɪ. 305, 315.