"
The Normans were a more polished, a more abstemious people; as scribes
and architects they were men to whom this district was greatly indebted.
Our only castle, our oldest remaining churches, our most curious and
valuable records, are all Norman.
"Such was the state of property and manners when the house of Lacy
became possessed of Blackburnshire." The simplicity of the Saxon tenures
was destroyed. A tract of country, which had been parcelled out among
twenty-eight lords, now became subject to one; and all the intricacies
of feodal dependence, all the rigours of feodal exaction, wardships,
reliefs, escheats, &c., were introduced at once. Yet the Saxon lords,
though dependent, were not in general actually stripped of their fees.
By successive steps, however, the origin of all landed property within
the hundred, some later copyholds excepted, is to be traced to voluntary
concessions from the Lacies, or their successors of the house of
Lancaster; not grants of pure beneficence, but requiring personal
service from the owners, and yearly customs or payments, equivalent at
that time to their value. Their present worth grew out of the operation
of causes little understood in these ages either by lord or
vassal--namely, the certainty of the possession, the diminishing value
of money, and the perpetuity of the title.
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