merchet

Merchet is especially interesting as illustrating the fusion of different duties into one.

And so we are driven to the inference, that different customs prevailed in this respect in places immediately adjoining each other, and that not all the feudal serfs descended from Saxon slaves paid merchet.

If, on the one hand, not all the serfs paid merchet, on155 the other there is sufficient evidence to show that it was paid in some cases by free people.

Again, the variety of conditions in which we come across the merchet, leads us to suppose that this term was extended through the medium of legal theory to payments which differed from each other in their very essence: the commutation of the 'jus primae noctis,' the compensation paid to the lord for the loss of his bondwoman leaving the156 manor, and the fine for marriage to be levied by the township or the hundred, were all thrown together.

I have said already that the succession of the youngest son appears with merchet, reeveship, etc., as a servile custom.