ABSTRACT
The first of these cases from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries involves merchet (fines paid by unfree tenants for permission to marry): the tenants are challenging the lord's right to exact merchet where a tenant holds some land by free service and some land as a villein, an unfree person. Interestingly, the lord exacting the fine is the local abbot – the canon law's insistence that even slaves have free consent in matrimony doesn't get in the way of collecting revenues on ecclesiastical manors. The second extract concerns fines paid by unfree tenants for permission not to marry specific persons. The final extract concerns leyrwite (fines for fornication).
