This “rent of land” was derived from those lands which had been purchased by Walter; those which the Walter, who makes this return, had himself obtained; and all those over which the Convent had acquired manorial rights. And I presume any other small tithe was included in this elemosinary item with “the young of animals.” The great tithe and the rent of the glebe land being accounted for in the spiritual part of the valuation. CHAPTER II. THE MANORS OF WESTBOURN AND PADDINGTON. IF we accept the definition of the word manor given by the learned Judge Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, {19} or look upon a manor to be “the subinfeudation of a particular district made by A to B,” I think we must come to the conclusion, that neither Westbourn nor Paddington, in ancient times, were manors in either of these senses, unless indeed we consider Westbourn and Tybourn synonymous terms, for we find no account of any lordly residence in either of these places till many centuries after the Conqueror’s survey; neither is there any account, which can be relied on, to establish the fact of any King having granted these districts to the Abbot and Monks of Westminster; or of the Abbot’s subinfeudation of them. And if we do not consider these places a portion of the Tybourn manor, it is pretty certain that the cottagers who cultivated the land in this neighbourhood were not only freemen, but freeholders, even at the time of the Conquest. They could have owned no other lord but the King, and the suit and service they would have rendered him differed but little from that exacted of the most powerful lord in the land. Each paid his tax according to his circumstances. But many new manors were created after the conquest, and an Act of Parliament, the 18th of Edward I, 1290, was passed to put a stop to this practice. It was no uncommon thing, for Religious Houses, when they had obtained a few acres of land in any place, to elevate them to the dignity of a manor, and assume on their general licence, manorial rights over the district in which their newly acquired property lay. {20a} Moreover, to secure the assistance of the monks, the early Norman Kings were frequently obliged to connive at practices of which they could not approve, but which they dared not condemn. And when the monks of Westminster, after casting a longing eye on the lands of Paddington, produced the charters which they called Edgar’s and Dunstan’s, and claimed the lordship over these outlying districts, the King, who then happened to require their services, may have thought it mattered but little, who reaped the benefits derivable from being the lord of the few tenants in Paddington. And he may have sanctioned that which was in fact an usurpation.