94 Karissimo amico suo tali forestario, talis miles salutem. A regia munificencia concesse sunt quatuor michi2 quercus in foresta illa cuius ad vos spectat custodia, quas ad quoddam molendinum ventericium ab ipso rege postulavi.3 Litteras eciam illius ad nos super hoc inpetravi, quarum tenore, si placet, supplico4 meis hominibus, quos ad istud negocium exequendum ad vos mitto, quercus illas assignare velitis, donum regale in quantum poteritis, salva vestra fidelitate, aumentantes.
To his dearest friend such-and-such a forester, such-and-such a knight [sends] greetings. By the king’s munificence, four oaks in the forest of which the custody belongs to you have been granted to me, which I asked for from the king for a certain windmill. I have succeeded in obtaining his letter to us on this matter, by the tenor of which, if it please you, I humbly beg that you will assign those oaks to my men, whom I send to you to carry out this business, increasing the royal gift as much as you can without betraying the king’s trust.5
This is the first of a collection of seven model letters (Documents 94–100) included in the formulary in Fairfax MS 27 (c. 1230). They all concern the proposed construction of a windmill, and also discuss various other administrative, professional, and personal matters. The correspondents are a knight of the king’s household, a royal forester, the forester’s serjeants (assistants), a carpenter, the knight’s manorial serjeant (bailiff), and the knight’s wife. No original collection of correspondence of this kind among such a group of ordinary people of widely varying status has survived for this period, but the character of the letters in this formulary collection makes it clear that such communications must have been routine.
The windmill or “post” mill was the most important invention, in terms of power technology, of the later medieval world.6 It first appeared in northwestern Europe, probably in Flanders or eastern England (especially East Anglia), where a lack of good watercourses made watermills scarce. Windmills are first mentioned in Flemish and English sources in the 1180s, and within a few years were common enough for Pope Celestine III (1191–98) to declare them liable for tithe.7 In England, the building of windmills seems to have been modest until the 1230s and later, when there was a surge of construction in the eastern counties.8 The proposed windmill construction that is the focus of this small collection of letters thus dates from the eve of the biggest growth of such construction in England.
In this letter, the knight writes to the officer in charge of a royal forest, a man of considerable standing and authority, to let him know that he has obtained a grant from the king of four oaks with which to build a windmill. The knight respectfully asks the forester to release the trees to the men whom he has sent to take charge of them, and he concludes with a delicately worded request that the forester increase the royal gift as much as he can without breaching the responsibilities of his office. The importance of the king’s gift and the reason for the knight’s desire to increase it was that oaks were valuable assets. A specimen manorial account of 1258–59 reports the receipt of 2s. from the sale of one oak; the same account lists payments to laborers at the rate of ½d. per day, and to artisans at 3d. per day. At these rates, the price of a single oak represented eight days’ wages for an artisan, and forty-eight days’ wages for a laborer.9
1 Fairfax 27, fol. 5r–v.
2 Inserted above line in MS.
3 Fol. 5v commences here.
4 suspecto in MS.
5 Literally, “saving your fidelity.”
6 Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 44.
7 Richard Holt, The Mills of Medieval England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), 20–22, 171– 75. Holt discounts as incorrect or untrustworthy a number of citations by Edward J. Kealey, in Harvesting the Air: Windmill Pioneers in Twelfth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), of earlier references to mills in the twelfth century.
8 Holt, Mills of Medieval England, 21–35.
9 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Rawlinson MS C. 775, pp. 119, 120.
95 Tali militi, talis forestarius salutem. Dono domini regis in litteris eius contento nec volo nec debeo resistere, maxime cum tale sit concessum cui vellem ut triplicaretur. Regii doni numerus2 deo dante non minuetur, immo pocius ad commodum vestrum, vestris viris videntibus, augebitur. Summitates eciam arborum et omnia que forestario inde competunt vobis concedimus ad focum vestrum; carpentariis et hominibus vestris in quantum poterimus ausiliabimur, nec aliam querimus remuneracionem quam vestram benevolenciam.
To such-and-such a knight, such-and-such a forester [sends] greetings. I neither wish to stand in the way of the gift of the lord king as contained in his letter, nor ought I to do so, especially since it is granted to one to whom I would wish it were tripled. The measure of the king’s gift shall not, God granting, be reduced, but rather—as your men shall see— increased, to your advantage. The crowns of the trees, and everything that belongs to the forester’s office, we grant to you, for your hearth; to your carpenters and men we shall give as much assistance as we can, nor do we seek any other recompense than your goodwill.
In this, the second letter of seven in this correspondence (see DOCUMENT 94), the royal forester replies graciously to the knight that he has no intention of blocking the king’s gift of oak trees. Rather, he augments the gift with his own perquisite (his benefit or entitlement) of the crowns of the trees, for firewood, and promises to assist the knight’s men who come to collect the trees, asking nothing in return but the knight’s goodwill.
This is a fine example of the importance of favors and obligation in medieval society. By providing favors to the knight of the kind described above, the forester is placing him under an obligation and creating or reinforcing bonds of mutual friendship and cooperation (cf. DOCUMENT 86). Such ties could be crucial in a world in which enmities, such as the threat of mortal enmity used to intimidate a rival in DOCUMENT 48, were ever-present dangers.
1 Fairfax 27, fol. 5v.
2 num[er]us or munus in MS; numerus seems to better fit the sense of this sentence.
96 Forestarius sibi servientibus subditis salutem. Ex dono domini regis concesse sunt quatuor quercus tali militi in foresta illa quam vos custoditis, et ideo vobis mandamus quatinus, in competenti loco ad commodum illius, illas quercus et quintam ex dono nostro suis hominibus assignatis. Concessimus enim eidem2 quicquid ad nos de predictis arboribus pertinet, et vobis precipimus quatinus de villis circumadiacentibus ausilium ad traendum et cariandum merinium eidem faciatis habere, non minus negociis illius in hac parte quam propriis meis intendentes.
A forester to the serjeants under his authority, greetings. Four oak trees in the forest that you guard have been granted by gift of the lord king to such-and-such a knight. And so we order you that, in a suitable place, at his convenience, you hand over those oaks, and a fifth one of our own gift, to his men, for we have granted him whatever pertains to us from those trees. And we order you to obtain assistance from the surrounding vills in hauling and carting the timber to him, and to consider his interests in this matter no less than my own.
This letter, the third in the collection of seven letters that begins with DOCUMENT 94, sheds some interesting light on the powers of royal foresters and the ways in which they used their authority.3 Here the forester writes to his assistants to tell them to hand five trees over to the knight’s men, and to summon men from the neighboring vills (villages or towns) to assist in transporting the trees to the knight’s manor.
In the preceding letter in this collection (DOCUMENT 95), the forester wrote that he was making the knight a gift of the crowns of the four oak trees granted by the king. These crowns would normally have been taken by the forester as a perquisite (benefit or entitlement) of his office. Here, however, the forester writes that he is giving the knight an entire tree as his own gift. Evidently he has the right to dispose of a number of the oaks in his custody.4 Such a valuable gift represents another example of the use of favors to create obligations and reinforce strategic friendships among the landholding and office-holding classes, as discussed under DOCUMENTS 86 and 95.
The forester’s perquisite of the crowns of felled trees provides an early example of the use of perquisites in kind (rather than in cash) to supplement money wages for officeholders, servants, and other employees at all levels of society. In the cash-poor economy of early thirteenth-century England, salaries of long-term employees were often modest and paid only at long intervals, such as once or twice a year. Cash wages were frequently supplemented with annual or semi-annual gifts of clothing (“livery robes,” discussed under DOCUMENTS 5, 6, and 77), and these are listed in surviving financial accounts. DOCUMENT 96 shows that wages might also be supplemented at this time, as they were in later periods, with perquisites of a more irregular or nebulous character. Such in-kind supplements seldom appear in financial records, however, because they were “off-budget”—they represented leftover, surplus, or reused items that did not need to be accounted for separately under receipts, and thus never had to be accounted for under expenditures. In later years such perquisites are reflected, at least by implication, in manorial and household regulations. For example, the unknown author of Fleta (c. 1290) specified that the household steward was to have each day’s allowance of flesh and fish cut up into portions in his presence and counted as they were delivered to the cook, but did not say what was to be done with unwanted off-cuts and leftovers, such as the heads and lower legs of meat-animals, feathers, fat, and empty barrels.5 Some later regulations, however (such as the ordinances made in 1468 for the household of George, duke of Clarence, and in 1473 for the household of Edward, prince of Wales), stated explicitly that certain remains of this kind were to be the perquisites or “fees” of the servants who handled them.6 The evidence from DOCUMENT 96 suggests that there may have been a similar arrangement in the early thirteenth century as well. Outside vendors also sometimes claimed perquisites; Fleta provides a glimpse of this in noting that the legitimate profits of a commercial baker included the bran sieved from the customer’s flour.7
1 Fairfax 27, fol. 5v.
2 In MS, the word “quod” (“that”) occurs between “eidem” and “quiquid,” but it does not fit the sense of the passage and ought to have been expunged from the text.
3 On the royal forests and their administration, see Charles Young, The Royal Forests of Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), passim; for abuses by the foresters, see especially 26–27, 61, 81–83.
4 Such perquisites were subject to abuse: one forester allegedly cut down 600 oaks and tried to conceal the theft by covering the stumps with turf. Young, Royal Forests, 82.
5 Henry Gerald Richardson and George Osborne Sayles, eds. and trans., Fleta, Selden Society, 72 (1955), 2:243.
6 [Society of Antiquaries], A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household (London: Society of Antiquaries, 1790), p. *32 [sic] (Prince Edward), pp. 95–96 (Clarence).
7 Richardson and Sayles, eds. and trans., Fleta, 2:118.
97 Miles carpentario salutem. Relatu plurimorum didici te subtilem esse et ingeniosum, et ideo quam cito poteris ad nos venire non differas, ut [ad]2 perticam [?perducendam]3 de molendino ventericio quod facere proposui opus incoatum procedat, et ad perfeccionem perducatur. Operarios enim siquos in partibus vestris ad hoc ydoneos inveneritis tecum adducere non omittas. Nos autem et illorum sedulitatem et laborem vestrum digna mercede remunerabimus, unius enim nove grangie facturam [tibi]4 simul et carpentariis quos tecum adducceris committere volumus, cuius longitudinem, latitudinem et altitudinem5 secundum tuam fieri volumus disposicionem.
A knight to a carpenter, greetings. I have learned from many people that you are meticulous and talented, and therefore do not delay coming to us as quickly as you can, so that the incomplete work on the [?unfinished] pole of a windmill that I have planned to build can proceed and be brought to completion. Do not neglect to find some honest workmen for this in your neighborhood to bring with you. We shall reward their zeal and your labor with an appropriate recompense, for we also wish to entrust [to you] and to the carpenters whom you will bring with you the making of a new barn, of which we wish the length, breadth, and height to be made according to your disposition.
DOCUMENT 97, written in the form of a letter of offer from a knight to a carpenter, anticipates by more than two decades the earliest references to building contracts in medieval England, and it is three-quarters of a century earlier than the earliest surviving texts. Nevertheless, despite the letter’s generic language and lack of detail (suitable for a model document), it embodies the essential features of such a contract. These were: a firm offer of employment; a description of the project (completion of a windmill, and design and construction of a barn); a specification of what the contractor is to supply (carpentry and design, and a crew of skilled workmen); a proposed commencement date (as soon as possible); and a stated fee (“appropriate” compensation for both contractor and crew). As a letter rather than a contract, however, DOCUMENT 97 does not include the carpenter’s acceptance of these conditions. It may well be that no standard form for building contracts existed in England at this time, since the early formularies do not include examples of them. In that case, this document may represent, in effect, medieval England’s earliest known building contract.6
DOCUMENT 97 is also the fourth in the collection of seven letters (beginning with DOCUMENT 94) that concern a knight and his construction projects. Here the knight writes to hire a carpenter whom he has selected after obtaining numerous positive referrals. From other letters in this collection (Documents 94–96 and 98) we learn that the timbers for the knight’s mill will come from five oak trees from a nearby royal forest, and that the knight expects that both the windmill and the barn will be completed in the course of the summer.7
The pole (pertica) of the windmill on which the knight is so impatient for work to resume evidently is the tail pole, which is prominently depicted in the two earliest known illustrations of windmills, both of them from England and both dating from the third quarter of the thirteenth century (Fig. 16).8 The design of windmills was based on their use of large, latticed sails covered with canvas or board to catch the wind, which provided the power for turning a heavy millstone. Windmills had to be turnable so that their sails could always face into the wind. The solution to this requirement was to balance a revolving millhouse (called a cabin or “buck”) atop a single, massive, vertical post (postis in Latin).9 The cabin was built of lightweight planking and was suspended on the post by a strong transverse beam called a crown tree. The post, which was stationary, had to be strong enough not only to support the weight of the cabin and its sails, but also to withstand the vibration of the vertically turning sails, the horizontal rotation of the cabin, and the grinding of the two horizontal millstones (a rotating upper stone and a fixed lower stone), which weighed about a ton apiece. Additional heavy timbers were needed to brace the vertical post and to provide sturdy foundations. The door to the cabin was reached from ground level by means of a plank, ladder, or lightweight set of stairs, and the long tail pole was pushed like a capstan bar to rotate the cabin so that its sails faced into the wind.10 The necessity, when building a windmill, of obtaining very large and heavy posts and timbers explains the importance of the king’s and the royal forester’s gift to the knight of five oak trees for this purpose in Documents 94 and 96.
Figure 16. A windmill with its tail pole, from Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. 2. 31, fol. 130 (c. 1255–60).
Throughout most of this letter the knight addresses the carpenter with the familiar “tu,” but occasionally he slips instead into the respectful “vos.” This probably represents careless drafting on the part of the unknown author, but just possibly it reflects the knight’s anxiety to obtain the services of this particular carpenter, causing him to address the latter at times as an equal (vos) rather than as an inferior (tu).
1 Fairfax 27, fol. 5v.
2 A preposition such as ad that takes the accusative case appears to be wanting here.
3 Word uncertain; in the MS, it appears as prudenciam, which does not fit the sense of the sentence.
4 Word supplied to preserve the sense of the sentence.
5 Corrected in MS from ltitudinem.
6 There is no example of a building contract in Fairfax 27, Add. 8167, or Walters MS. W. 15.
7 In the only other extant contract for a windmill from medieval England, which dates from 1434, the abbot of Bury St. Edmunds hired a carpenter to build a windmill at Tivetshall, Norfolk, in the space of four months. Louis F. Salzman, Building in England Down to 1540 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1952; rpt. with corrections and additions, 1967), 505, no. 65.
8 For the earliest illustrations of windmills, see Kealey, Harvesting the Air, 14–23, Frontispiece (BL, MS Harley 3487, fol. 161r) and Fig. 5 (Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. 2. 31, fol. 130). According to Nigel Morgan, both manuscripts were illustrated by the same workshop, probably in Oxford. Morgan dates CUL, Ee. 2. 31, to c. 1255–60, and BL, Harley 3487, to c. 1265–70. Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts, in A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, 4 (London: Harvey Miller, 1982–87), vol. 2, 1250–1285, nos. 140, 142, pp. 125–27 (Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. 2. 31), and no. 145 (BL, MS Harley 3487).
9 See Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “postis,” 1(d) (1259).
10 On the design of windmills, see Kealey, Harvesting the Air, 14–21; and Holt, Mills of Medieval England, 139–44.
98 Talis miles servienti de illo manerio salutem. Manerium meum et res meas tue fidelitati2 custodiendas commisi, de vestra fidilitate [sic] confidens et prudencia. Providias ut terra mea bene colatur, et segetes mee tribulis et aliis immundiciis emundantur, horrea mea bene cooperantur [et]3 sepibus4 claudantur, et de omnibus aliis rebus meis prout michi melius expedire videris ordinentur. Precipue5 quantam poteris diligenciam adhibeas ad perquirendum6 michi [. . .]7 michi in foresta illa vicinorum et rusticorum meorum ausilium perquiras, ut in hac estate molendinum meum ventericium et grangia nova perfici valeant. Providias quoque de brasio faciendo [ad]8 servisiam, et bladum tritulare facias ad panem, et tres vaccas, et decem multones, et lx. aucas impinguari, quam ab inchoacione operis usque ad perfeccionem in illis partibus cum tota familia mea perhendinabo.
Such-and-such a knight to the bailiff9 of that manor, greetings. I have committed the custody of my manor and my affairs to your loyalty, trusting in your fidelity and good judgment. See to it that my land is well cultivated, and my fields cleared of thorns and other rubbish, my barns well roofed [and] enclosed with fences,10 and that all of my affairs are put in order for me as you shall think best. And especially, as much as you can, you are also to turn your diligence to seeking out for me ([?or, to obtaining] for me)11 in that forest the assistance of my neighbors and villeins, so that this summer my windmill and new barn may be completed. You are also to arrange for the making of malt for ale, and to have wheat threshed for bread, and to have three cows and ten sheep and sixty geese fattened, since I shall be staying in those parts with my entire household from the beginning of that work [i.e., construction] until it is completed.
This letter provides a checklist of typical duties expected of a bailiff of a manor: overseeing farm-work, attending to the proper maintenance of buildings and enclosures, taking care of finances, and stocking up on provisions when the lord planned a visit. Another letter from a knight to a manorial bailiff about the performance of routine tasks can be found in DOCUMENT 53, and similar letters ordering the stocking of foodstuffs in anticipation of a visit can be found in Documents 17, 18, and 64.
In this letter, the bailiff is also charged with obtaining local assistance to help complete the knight’s new barn and windmill during the coming summer. That would make the barn and mill available by the time of the autumn harvest for storing the lord’s crops and for grinding the grain of the lord and his tenants.
1 Fairfax 27, fol. 5v.
2 fideliti in MS.
3 Word supplied to preserve the sense of the passage.
4 sepes in MS.
5 Abbreviated word unclear in MS: pap or pccp or pcip.
6 In MS, the “per-” here was inserted above the line.
7 There is a blank space here in the text about 1.6 inches (4 cm) long. The exemplar from which this text was copied may have contained a variant phrasing here, beginning with “vel” (“or”) and ending with “michi” (“for me”), such as vel, ad impetrandum michi (“or, to obtaining for me”). On variant phrasings such as this, see Documents 5, 24, 32, 44, 46, 47, and 62.
8 Word supplied to preserve the sense of this clause.
9 On the translation of serviens as “bailiff,” see DOCUMENT 50.
10 The word sepibus here could also mean “hedges,” but “fences” seems more likely in this context since it took much longer to grow a hedge than to build a fence.
11 On this suggested variant phrase, see note 7, above.
99 Tali militi, talis serviens salutem et fidele servicium.3 Res vestras bonaque mee tutele commissa bene custodivi, nec aliam quero remuneracionem quam fideles vestri michi voluerint iudicare. Merenium vobis datum per ausilium vicinorum et rusticorum iam4 extractum5 est, et ad situm molendini perductum est, et de wa[r]nestura6 de qua michi mandastis nihil omnino deficit. Sciatis7 quod a creditoribus mutuo denarios ad hoc accepi, de quibus oportet ut de camera vestra vel de blado vestro cum veneritis satisfaciatis. Restat igitur sicut8 mandastis veniatis, quia presencia vestra super carpentarios et operarios valde poterit esse neccessaria. Valete.
To such-and-such a knight, his bailiff [sends] greetings and faithful service. I have taken good care of your affairs and goods, which you committed to my keeping, and I seek no other remuneration than your loyal men would wish to accord me. The timber given to you has now been delivered by the aid of your neighbors and villeins and taken to the site of your mill, and concerning the provisioning (warnestura) of which you sent me word, nothing at all is lacking. You should know that I have received cash for this through a loan from your creditors. Concerning which, it would be a good idea (oportet), when you come, if you were to satisfy that debt from your chamber or your grain. As things stand, therefore, you should come as you sent word [you would], since your presence could be very necessary [for keeping an eye] on the carpenters and laborers. Farewell.
In this letter, written in response to DOCUMENT 98, the bailiff reports back to the knight to confirm that the manor is in good order, and that he has taken care of the tasks specified in the knight’s letter—namely, organizing the delivery of timber for the knight’s planned windmill, and provisioning the manor with foodstuffs against the arrival of the knight and his wife and household.
The bailiff also reports that he has taken it upon himself to obtain a loan on the knight’s behalf to pay for the provisions. Clearly the bailiff had little or no cash at hand with which to make these purchases—yet another indication of the limitations of the cash supply. The lack of ready cash was a problem that is mentioned in many of the letters in this volume (see, e.g., Documents 3, 11, and 13). Here the bailiff’s solution (like that of the agent in DOCUMENT 13) was to obtain a loan in his master’s name; in this case, from the knight’s unnamed “creditors.” These lenders evidently knew and trusted the bailiff as well as the knight and were prepared to extend additional credit to the knight for this purpose. However, the bailiff’s delicately worded warning that the knight should repay this debt upon his arrival, either with cash from his “chamber” (his treasury, housed in his private bedchamber or suite) or grain from his stores, suggests that the loan in question was strictly for the short term.
1 On the translation of serviens as “bailiff,” see DOCUMENT 50.
2 Fairfax 27, fol. 5v.
3 For other examples of this salutation, see Documents 60 and 69.
4 per struck through here in MS.
5 extractatum in MS.
6 wanestura in MS. Cf. Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, s.v. “garnestura.” For this identification we are grateful to Richard Sharpe.
7 siatis in MS.
8 sicut ut in MS.
100 Talis miles uxori sue salutem, et amoris fedus indissoluibile. A curia recedens2 apud illum manerium perhendinare proposui. Quare tibi mitto palefridum meum proprium et sumerium, et alios equos meos et homines, ut illuc ad me venias, et mecum ibidem perhendinas, donec molendinum meum et nova grangia perficiantur, per tantum enim tempus a domino rege licenciam optinui pro factis [sic] vero molendini et horrei. Cum ad curiam rediero, iocundius ibidem perhendinare cum familia tua poteris et morari. Valete.
Such-and-such a knight to his wife, greetings, and indissoluble bond of love. I am withdrawing from the court and have planned to stay at that manor. So I am sending you my own palfrey and sumpter, and my other horses and men, so that you can come to me there and stay with me until my mill and new barn are finished, for I have obtained leave from the lord king for the amount of time [needed] for the making of my mill and barn. When I return to court, you will be able to stay on and live there more pleasantly with your household. Farewell.
In addition to this letter, the two formularies represented in this volume include two other letters from husbands to wives (Documents 75 and 77) and one letter from a wife to a husband (DOCUMENT 76). All four letters include strong expressions of conjugal affection, but combine this with a very matter-of-fact tone and content, providing an implicit demonstration that such letters between spouses were routine affairs in this period.
Regular correspondence between husbands and wives would have been necessary in many elite households because, while some married couples sometimes traveled together (as in DOCUMENT 15), important men often spent extended periods away from their families. Some traveled for official or business purposes, such as attending courts and councils, visiting scattered estates, and making buying trips to fairs (see, e.g., Documents 10, 46, and 98). Others were summoned to war, or traveled for pleasure or for sport (as in DOCUMENTs 24, 25, 61, and 63), and some spent time in custody, such as the unfortunate knights in Documents 27 and 28. Still others, like the knights in this letter and in DOCUMENT 77, were in royal service and lived much of the time at court. As this letter shows, royal household knights, like other members of the royal court, had to obtain formal permission in order to leave the court to visit their families, or for any other reason.3
The knight writes that he has sent his own palfrey (riding horse) and sumpter (packhorse) for his wife, together with men and additional horses, to convey her and her household to their manor.4 This suggests that the knight and his wife are of rather modest means, since the knight’s wife evidently has no riding horse or packhorse of her own. It seems likely that she has been staying with family or friends rather than in her own establishment, since her belongings do not require even a single cart to transport them to the manor. Now, however, she will be spending the summer with her husband in their own house, and after he returns to court she will be able to stay on there, to superintend the estate during the harvest season and take full advantage of the new barn and windmill.
It is interesting to note that in the opening salutation the knight puts himself first, a sign of superiority, while relegating his wife to the inferior secondary position. Throughout the text, however, he uses the familiar ego/tu (I/ thou) rather than the formal nos/vos (we/you), a sign of informality and intimacy.
1 Fairfax 27, fol. 5v.
2 residens in MS.
3 See S. D. B. Brown, “Leavetaking: Lordship and Mobility in England and Normandy in the Twelfth Century,” History, 79, no. 256 (June 1994), 199–215, especially 205 and 208.
4 On palfreys, see DOCUMENT 47.
