*Ø* Blogmanac October 30 | Quaint ancient tax

The Rhyne Toll, Chetwode Manor
At Chetwode, near Buckingham, England, the Lord of the Manor has the right to levy a yearly tax, called the ‘Rhyne Toll’, on all cattle found between October 30 and November 7 on his ‘liberty’, a grazing domain.

The origins of the ceremony associated with the toll are described in an Elizabethan-era document. The people had to blow a whelk-shell, or a horn, immediately after the sun rose on Chetwode Manor, then blow it in the field between Newton Purcell and Barton Hartshorne. Then the instrument had to be blown a third time at “a place near the town of Finmere, in the county of Oxford”, then a fourth time at “a certain stone in the market of the town of Buckingham”. Further places are given in the document. Then followed the customs associated with the actual collecting of the tax.

By the 19th century, festivities commenced at 9am, and gingerbread and beer were distributed amongst the assembled boys, the girls being excluded.

How it began
The parish was formerly part of an ancient forest called Rookwoode. The ‘liberty’ of Chetwode had the boundaries of this forest. In olden times, it was inhabited by an enormous wild boar. It attacked locals and visitors, ruining the tourist trade – yes, there was always a tourist trade of sorts, however primitive by modern standards.

Naturally, the Lord of Chetwode determined to have the beast slain (‘slay’ being a word meaning ‘kill’ as used in olden times – and currently by journalists), and eventually it was a certain Sir Ryalas who did the deed.The gallantry of the knight reached the ears of the king, who awarded him this tax, and to his heirs forever.

In 1810 a mound (called from time immemorial ‘Boar's Head Field’) in the forest near the manor, near a ditch called the ‘Boar's Pond’, was excavated and the skeleton of an enormous boar was discovered.

Source: Chambers’s Book of Days