But there is little doubt that for the manors of Bec as a whole this ambiguous item was fixed more by the accidents of accounting practice than by the survival of ancient distinctions between different types of villein dues. By setting custumals and accounts together it can be seen that most of the renders mentioned in the customs have left traces in the accounts; but they had already ceased to be numerous and complicated when the customs were written down. A new and scattered estate under a foreign abbot was not, after all, liable to the 'trifling, miscellaneous services . . . exacted by a resident lord and a soulless corporation'. 1
4. NOTE ON THE PRINTED TEXT
In printing the manuscripts, scribal peculiarities of construction and spelling have been preserved, except where a slip of the pen seems obvious. S and c are used interchangeably by the scribes, and so are s and x: both tonsio and toncio, seperacio and ceperacio can be found, and Essex occurs in the forms Essessa, Exessa and Essexa. The doubling of letters follows no fixed rule; caruca and carruca, lotare and lottare, for example, occur at random. Some words are used at different times in different declensions: both ad precaries and ad precarias are common, and the ablative plural of filia is given as both filiis and filiabus.Certain abbreviations have been adopted for constantly recurring words to save space: vend' represents vendito, vendita and venditis;quart' and bus' represent quarterium and bussellus. Occasionally, where a word might be extended in two ways, the scribal suspension has been preserved; since one scribe wrote both furneatum and furnitum in full, the abbreviation furn', where it occurs, has not been extended.Throughout the text Arabic have been substituted for Roman numerals. This practice, adopted by Miss Midgley in editing The Earldom of Cornwall Accounts in this series, adds greatly to the clarity of the documents, and seems open to no serious objection.In collating the manuscripts of the custumals I have used, as already explained, the following symbols:
A The earliest version of Dd 33, in which spelling and grammar are often extremely crude.
B The final version of Dd 33.
C The earliest copy based on A with a few additions.
D The second copy based on A with more additions.
E The definitive custumal for most manors, roughly corresponding to B; the sentences have been recast and are more fluent and less clumsy than in the roll.
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Publication Information: Book Title: Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec. Contributors: Marjorie Chibnall - author. Publisher: Royal Historical Society. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1951. Page Number: xv.
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