RAPUM DE LEWES

Hundreda de YONESMERE²

Villani Comitis Warrenia³

[1] The original roll is among the Carlton Ride MSS. (E. B. 1781), and is one of the most perfect and clear records of this description now extant, consisting of twenty skins of parchment, on one side of which the tax-payers of the three eastern rapes of the county are written down in three long parallel columns, arranged in hundreds, while the other side is occupied by similar columns of the three western rapes. It is entitled, in Latin, "The Elevent from the county of Sussex in the 24th year of the reign of King Edward;" and the indorsement runs thus - "Eleventh of the County of Sussex. Philip de Waleby, deputy (tenens locum) of
W. de Langeton, treasurer, received this Roll on the 7th day of May, in the 24th year, by the hands of Robert de Pasele, master William de Irton, the taxers and collectors of the eleventh and seventh in the county of Sussex."

[2] The modern hundred of Younsmere comprises Falmer, Ovingdean, Rottingdean. The hundred courts were held in the memory of man at Younsmere Pit, between the two latter.

[3] Villeins of Earl Warren (Warenne).

[4] The sieur. sir. (A. W.) - The senior.?

Villein (pronounced "vill-ain") was the term used in the feudal era to denote a tenant farmer who was legally tied to the land he worked on. An alternative term is serf (from Latin servus = "slave"). A villein could not leave the land without the landowner's consent. Villeins thus occupied the social space between a free peasant (or "freeman") and a slave. The majority of medieval European peasants were villeins. Basically, they are villagers. (Source: Wikipedia).