Production for the Market on a Small Fourteenth-Century Estate

Abstract

he series of account rolls from Langenhoe, Essex, which has survived from the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries is something out of the ordinary. Accounts are extant for fifteen whole years, Michaelmas to Michaelmas, and two half-years between I324-5 and I439-40. Most of them are from the later fourteenth century, when Langenhoe was part of the estates of the de Sutton family, but the accounts of five years, all before the Black Death, have survived from the time of the manor's previous lord, Lionel de Bradenham, who died in I370.1 Lionel de Bradenham was a very minor light amongst the English landlords of his day, for Langenhoe was his only manor. It was assessed at three-quarters of a knight's fee in I328 2 and at half a knight's fee in I 346.3 There is nothing to suggest that Lionel had much outlying property, although the accounts imply that he had a serjeant, grew some grain and kept some livestock in the adjoining village of Abberton during the I340's. A fine was levied in I 336 to confirm his possession of eight acres of meadow in Abberton.4 Accounts from a lay estate as small as this are a great rarity, and it is only by coincidence that we have them. The series has been reassembled in Essex County Record Office during the present century. Six of the rolls were deposited in I926 by a London firm of solicitors, and the remaining ones have arrived since the last war, two from a Chelmsford office and ten from a Colchester office.5 The five early rolls have a special peculiarity. In each year the serjeant has recorded the names of a large number of the people who bought grain from the manor, however small the quantity each bought, and from them a list can be made of more than sixty men and women who bought grain there in the second quarter of the century. He took such pains to record the details of his marketing arrangements because his responsibilities were heavy enough to require it. As Leo de Bradenham's only manor, Langenhoe was vital to him as a source of cash. But a list of names would remain no more than a list of names, did not the