Family Lessons 135: Foldage

A twelfth-century ancestor of mine was appointed Master Serjeant of Lancashire’s West Derby Hundred, which meant that he, and his sons who inherited the office, had some legal and military responsibilities along with the county’s sheriff. This naturally entitled them to some recompense, including the right to profit from ‘foldage’. This appears to have allowed the de Walton family to impound cattle which had strayed from their respective owners’ fields, with the right to charge a rate of ½d for each night in winter and ¼d in summer. Although halfpennies and farthings seem to be rather small amounts, the farmers of West Derby may have been careless (and therefore profitable), for Foldage was worth £9, 13 shillings and 4d. in 1321 according to an Inquiry. The National Archives' online calculator translates this to £4,451.34 in 2017, but the scarcity of silver money in medieval times would have made it tens of times more valuable in real terms. So my 21st great-grandfather, William de Walton, whose death sparked the Inquiry, seems to have done rather well out of other people’s stray livestock. So long as he could impound, house and feed these creatures for less than a farthing in summer and an halfpenny in winter, he was literally quids in, and these beasts were his cash cows.

One wonders at the carelessness, or incapacity, of the farmers of South Lancashire to keep hold of their farm animals. When a pound had 240 pennies, it represented 480 (or even 960) nights of impounding. 9 pounds, 13 shillings and 4 pence equates to 4488 days assuming they were all in winter, or up 9000 if they occurred in the summer. The real figure is likely to be somewhere in between, but it is still a lot of stray cattle.

The Lord Jesus, speaking of sheep, asked in Matthew 18:12:

“What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying?”

“All we like sheep have gone astray”, cried Isaiah, but Christ the Good Shepherd comes to seek and save the lost, bringing home the strays and finding the wanderers. He does this not for money like the de Waltons, but for love of the lost. I am such a sheep, and I am so incredibly grateful for amazing grace which not only found me, but keeps me.