In
those days nobody signed their names, not because they could not
write, for I suspect that just as large a proportion of people in
England could write well six hundred years ago, as could have done so
forty years ago, but because it was not the fashion to sign one's
name. Instead of doing that, everybody who was a free man, and a man
of substance, in executing any legal instrument, affixed to it his
_seal_, and that stood for his signature. People always carried
their seals about with them in a purse or small bag, and it was no
uncommon thing for a pickpocket to cut off this bag and run away with
the seal, and thus put the owner to very serious inconvenience. This
was what actually did happen once to William le Butler's father-in-
law. He was a certain Sir Richard Bellhouse, and he lived at North
Tuddenham, near Dereham. Sir Richard was High Sheriff for the
counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1291, and his duties brought him
into court on January 25th of that year, before one of the Judges at
Westminster. I suppose the court was crowded, and in the crowd some
rogue cut off Sir Richard's purse, and made off with his seal. I
never heard that he got it back again. [Footnote: Abbreviatio Placit.
284, b.]
And now I must return to the point from which I wandered when I began
to speak of the free tenants and the "villeins.
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