History of corn milling .. - Centrostudirpinia.it

SOME FEUDAL MILLS. 35
mentioned in Domesday are not claimed in the H-
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1 11 ^1 1 i_ r 1
o SHREWSBURY
1
charter at all. Clearly, therefore, early m 1087, the abbey
earl had withdrawn them, as already supposed, and
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substituted the more efficient gift of the multure of 2; Grant of
the city, which is claimed. That is, he constituted
the abbey mills the manorial mills of Shrewsbury,
with the usual stipulation that they should grind
for the lord's court when he should be in resi-
dence there. This was an ordinary service— free
multure paid to the lord, in return for and in recognition
of the enjoyment of the multure of the manor.
The one was part and parcel of the other, and the
whole story of the charter is thus compact and
complete. Nothing, moreover, is more probable than
that the earl—whose interest in the abbey's welfare
was so strong, and whose faith in the monks' rectitude
so — great should, on the one hand, give them what
revenue was to be had from the city multure ; and,
on the other, entrust to them the duty of providing
and maintaining, as all manorial soke-owners were
bound to do, a sufficiency of adequate mills for the
needs of the city. The three manorial mills thus
to be maintained for the use of the public were all
in the Abbey Foregate suburb of the town upon
the Mola; or rather upon an ancient and longextended
mill-race headed up from the same near to
the abbey.
3. Next follows a charter by ''
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King William," 3. An alleged
whom Owen and Blakeway assume to have been the Forged
Conqueror, but whom all the evidences identify as
William IL; the charter being granted apparently
in July 1094, when Earl Roger, having become a
monk of Shrewsbury, was an inmate of the abbey for
but a few days before his death. It is not surprising,
therefore, to find the local historians repudiating the
authenticity of ''this pretended charter." It might
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