Demesne Lands Research Articles

The Midland Economy and Society, 1314-1348: Insights from Changes in the Landscape

The economic and social trends in the period between the famine of 1315–17 and the plague epidemic of 1348–50 are difficult to understand. This article uses changes in the landscape to broaden the scope of the inquiry into the economic trajectory of those years. Worcester Cathedral Priory had expanded the size and number of tenant holdings by allocating pieces of demesne land just before the famine. In 1336–40 tenants were granted land taken from the waste or from the demesne, in many cases explicitly to build new houses The new holdings can be traced on the ground, and their landscape context identified. The attempt to grow rent income to protect the monastery from the effects of recession was short lived, though the new settlements did not immediately fail. Similar ventures can be found on other estates. The well-documented organisation of new settlements has implications for the role of medieval lords in landscape planning.

Demesne Exemption from Royal Taxation in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England

The dominant model for the interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon rural economy was advanced by Rosamond Faith in 1997. Central to Faith’s study is the distinction which she makes between the conditions of ‘inland’, the land held in direct management by the landholder, and the conditions of what she identifies as ‘warland’, land occupied by peasant tenants.1 This distinction forms the basis of Faith’s view of later Anglo-Saxon lordship.2 Lightly burdened peasants are interpreted as the occupants of ‘warland’; peasants with heavier labour services are interpreted as relating to ‘inland’—manorialised areas under more intensive lordship.3 The distinction is not quite the classic ‘bipartite’ division of the manor, but something close to this. Moreover, the Old English term inland certainly denoted land in direct management, and appears in sources with this meaning from the ninth century onwards.4 Of central importance for this article is the fact that the distinction posited by Faith is ultimately fiscal, relating to the operation of royal taxation and other royal obligations. Faith’s position effectively revives the view of Vinogradoff, who regarded ‘inland’ as an area exempt from taxation and military service.5 The privileged nature of demesne land is contrasted by her with ‘warland’, tenanted land, liable to taxation and on which the burden of military service is seen to have fallen.6 This view has many consequences for Faith’s overall interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon rural economy. For example, the privileged nature of demesne land is seen to have brought the peasants working on it under firmer seigneurial control.7 Thus, the distinction is accorded a considerable role in the ‘privatisation’ of former public obligations into forms of economic power controlled by the landholder, through the protection afforded to occupants of inland from taxation and the obligation to perform military service.8 The distinction is, additionally, regarded as having very long-term origins, through a possible connection with the law-code of the West Saxon king, Ine (688–726).9

Medieval Farm Management and Technological Mentalities: Hinderclay before the Black Death

A ssessing the progress of agriculture lies at the heart of any discussion of pre-industrial economic development and social welfare, not least with respect to England in the decades before the Black Death of 13489, when the country's population was probably higher than at any other time prior to the mid-eighteenth century. Current interpretations of medieval farming are certainly not as gloomy as they were 30 years ago, when Titow reported the low yields prevalent on the estates of the bishop of Winchester in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries and Postan declared that 'the inertia of medieval agricultural technology is unmistakable'.2 But while it is now recognized that technology was in fact far from static in this period and that many yield-raising techniques were known and successfully adopted, it is also clear that such techniques were by no means universally employed. For despite growing evidence from manorial account rolls that landlords in a few regions developed comparatively intensive and productive farming systems, it nevertheless remains the case that less intensive forms of agriculture and substantially lower yields were common on demesne farms across much of the rest of the country. Unfortunately, there are no comparable records for medieval peasants, who in total cultivated a much greater proportion of the land, though it is generally considered likely that landlords and peasants in the same locality followed essentially the same system of husbandry. Consequently, Astill and Grant concluded, we still have 'a slightly depressing picture of medieval agricultural progress and productivity', in which 'opportunities for improvement may have existed but were not taken up.3 Explanations for the observed differences in demesne land use have focused in part on variations in market opportunity. The more progressive systems operated in areas with access to major urban markets, while in 'remoter parts of the country, removed from major markets and often

Estate Management, Investment and the Gentleman Landlord in Later Medieval England1

Abstract This article is based on a booklet of accounts for the small estate of Newton, Cheshire. Compiled 1498-1506 by Newton's gentry landlord, they provide rare information on the management and investment strategies of a minor gentleman for his demesne lands. It is to the gentry that historians have generally turned for evidence of enterprise and investment on medieval estates; but few specific examples have been found. This article offers a detailed example supporting the view of the enterprising gentleman, and arguing that a wider diversity of investment was undertaken on a medieval north Midland's estate than is usually appreciated.

A landscape of medieval reclamation: Walland Marsh, Kent

ABSTRACT Walland Marsh, Kent, is the south-western half of the large coastal lowland known generally as Romney Marsh, in the south-eastern corner of England. Reclamation, which involved building embankments to enclose large blocks of land and organising the land drainage there, had begun by mid twelfth century and was complete by 1500. This provided a landscape of walls and a variety of ditch patterns. The sequence of reclamation is reconstructed on the basis of these landscape features, supported by evidence of the soils, parish boundaries and historic documents including surveys, rentals, and farmers' and demesne accounts. Three areas, including both tenant and demesne land belonging to Christ Church, Canterbury, were studied and mapped as detailed examples. Because of the complex interaction of environmental, demographic and economic factors the progress of reclamation was by no means continuous or uninterrupted. Nor did the chronology coincide with general expectations of advance and contraction based on other areas. It is concluded that expansion was halted in the mid-thirteenth century, earlier than expected, by sea floods. However, reclamation to provide additional pasture began again c. 1400, surprisingly soon after the Black Death: this may have been related to the cloth industry in the nearby Weald.

Demesne resources and labour rent on the manors of St Paul's Cathedral, 1066-1222

A remarkable collection of material relating to the properties of the Dean and Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral, London, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries has several times been called into evidence in the debate over the twelfth-century economy.' Most notably it was used by Postan to support his contention that the twelfth century saw a decline of demesne husbandry on many large ecclesiastical estates, a process marked both by the leasing of demesne land to tenants and by the substitution of money rents for labour services. The St Paul's material is also relevant to Postan's general view that the policy of leasing manors was at best 'a reasonable response to the economic difficulties of the time', at worst a recipe for economic stagnation and non-dynamic management, by which manorial assets were run down in the hands of lessees.2 Apart from Hale's perceptive introduction to the Domesday of St Paul's, no other detailed study of this exceptional archive has yet been made from the point of view of medieval agrarian history. The limited aim of this article is to address the same questions which concerned Postan, but to answer them in a different way. It proposes that the policy of leasing entire manors led to active management which maintained or increased their capital assets, their leasable value, and by implication, their profitability. In contrast to the widely held picture of a decline in demesne husbandry on manors that were leased 'at farm' in the twelfth century it puts forward a contrary thesis: that on manors 'at farm' demesne arable was stable or increasing in size, and well maintained. The leasing of parcels of demesne land to tenants was part of a deliberate strategy to make available an increased labour supply to service expanded demesnes. This suggestion involves a different interpretation of the meaning of land in domino than that which is generally used. In conclusion it proposes that this increase in the supply of labour rent was made possible by an expansion in the number of peasant tenancies in a period of rising population and demand for land.

Land, Tenure, and Population in the Royal Manor of Havering, Essex, 1251–13521′3

T HE king's manor of Havering, i 2 miles east of London, was surveyed by the crown twice during the central medieval period, in I 25i and again a century later. These two Extents, particularly the unusually full record from I352/3, enable us to describe the tenure of land within the manor, to examine the nature of the subtenants and subtenancies, and to calculate how much land each person had in his actual occupancy. A tentative history of land clearing, population, and tenure in Havering during the years between I25i and I 352/3 may be compiled from a variety of other records. The rather precocious development of Havering's economy into a later medieval pattern, and the manor's position on the periphery of the London market, lend general interest to this material. Wavering's physical setting and legal/administrative background were of primary importance to its economic life. The manor was large in size, i6,ooo acres, stretching northward from the Thames for nine miles. After a section of marsh along the river the land in the southern half of the area is easily worked, gravelly soil, of rather low fertility; it was in this region that the original fields and the community of Hornchurch lay. The market town of Romford, on the main London-Chelmsford road, was the institutional centre of the manor, north of which lay heavy London clay, still densely wooded in i 200. With the exception of the enclosed royal park, the woodlands were gradually being taken over by the tenants throughout the medieval and Tudor periods. In io86 the tenant and demesne lands constituted about 5,ooo acres. By I25I this had grown to 8,500 acres, and in the following century another i,000 acres were added. Between I350 and i650 the arrented land grew from 9,500 to i2,000 acres. Havering was a royal manor of the ancient demesne.2 Rents and services had been fixed before I 251, and with few exceptions the crown made no attempt to supervise or control what went on within the manor as long as the traditional issues were forthcoming. No restriction was placed upon the transfer or division of land, upon marriage, or upon personal mobility. There was thus an open land market among a population of functionally free peasants. Havering's economy was diverse and flexible. Most land was held in separate fields, ranging normally from 3 to 2o acres. During the thirteenth and fourteenth

Neo-Serfdom: Its Origin and Nature in East Central Europe

The freeing of the serfs occurred in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century. Although it ended the personal subjection of the peasantry and abolished the feudal obligations of deliveries in kind and services, bringing to a close the feudal and clearing the way for the capitalist form of landholding, this transformation allowed the ex-feudal lords to retain those lands that they had administered themselves in the past by converting into peasant holdings only the so-called rustical lands that had previously been cultivated on their own account by the serfs. The demesne lands, which the feudal owners had managed themselves, were for the greater part cultivated by robot (corvée) labor, and to a lesser extent by those who worked for wages, although some parts were worked by landless peasants to whom they were rented out in exchange for a great variety of obligations. These people received no land when the serfs were freed. The most serious socioeconomic problem of the capitalist century in Eastern Europe was the misery of the masses of landless .peasants as well as of the small and dwarf holders who lived in the shadow of the large estates whose origin was feudal and on which they worked as wage laborers. For this reason it is quite understandable that the origin of the land-tenure system that followed the freeing of the serfs had to become, sooner or later, one of the focal points of historical research.

Neo-Serfdom in Hungary

In the particular case of Hungary, neo-serfdom is to be seen as an economic, political, and social evolution in which the political power of the nobility, especially that of the gentry, grew considerably; the demesne lands of the lords disproportionately increased at the expense of the serfs' rustical lands; the lords' seigneurial jurisdiction over their peasants increased; and the lords' management of their economy shifted from receiving rents to producing for markets. It was a system of social stagnation in which the evolution of cities and an urban middle class, a potential counterbalance to the nobility, was made impossible, and the serfs had no way out of their degrading environment and status. These conditions developed rapidly after the suppression of the Dózsa revolt of 1514, the greatest peasant movement of discontent in Hungary. As a result, the peasants were bound to the soil. The national Diet of 1547, however, enacted the serfs' right of migration, a freedom which was re enacted several times more.

The Pipe Rolls and the Adoption of Demesne Farming in England

IT iS generally accepted that the management of landed estates in England changed radically between the mid-twelfth and the mid-thirteenth century with the introduction of demesne farming: manors were run by the landlord's local officers, answerable to him for all receipts and expenses, instead of by lessees who paid a predetermined annual rent. But even detailed studies of individual estates have failed to reveal much of the chronology of the change. Where they exist, private estate-accounts provide indisputable evidence; it is through these, for example, that we know that the estates of the bishop of Winchester were mostly under direct management by I208.1 But probably very few estates produced such written accounts in the early thirteenth century, and of these fewer still have survived: there is no other estate from which we have complete accounts before I 240 covering all the manors in its possession.2 A good deal of scattered evidence from individual places certainly survives. A document in the cartulary of Beaulieu Abbey, for instance, provides for an agreement over tithes of Little Faringdon (Oxfordshire) to come into effect when its demesne lands there, leased to men of the vill from Michaelmas 12I3, come under the abbey's direct management once more.3 But evidence of this sort, although valuable, is too haphazard to give us an overall picture. The present article attempts to provide this from the published Pipe Rolls of the Royal Exchequer from I I 55 to I 2 I 6.4

Lost Villages in South-West Carmarthenshire

Recent research has corrected the commonly held view that medieval open-field agriculture and enclosure on the English pattern was absent from Wales. Similarly this paper corrects the impression that the desertion of villages and hamlets was confined to England by tracing the evolution of the settlement pattern in the Commote of Laugharne in south-west Carmarthenshire. It demonstrates that the present-day pattern is not, as is commonly supposed, the original pattern, but has evolved over the last 600-700 years from a number of villages and hamlets, to a landscape of predominantly scattered farmsteads with only four nucleations. The reasons for the disappearance of the other nucleations are shown to be similar to those responsible for lost villages in England, namely the desire of landlords to benefit from the boom in wool prices towards the end of the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth centuries, and the creation of parks. It is also shown how the tribal basis of Welsh society and the tenurial system contributed to or prevented the depopulations. IN HIS RESEARCHES into lost villages in England M. W. Beresford found that there was comparatively little depopulation in the northern and western counties of England, and, by inference, in Wales also. He records only one lost village in Carmarthenshire and that was submerged by the sea.1 A few depopulations consequent upon the Black Death in 1349 have been noted elsewhere.2 Apart from these isolated examples, information for the rest of Wales is almost non-existent. Yet the story of the commote, and later manor, of Laugharne in the southwestern corner of Carmarthenshire in the period I440-I590 is precisely one of the desertion of villages and hamlets (Fig. I). The earliest evidence extant for the settlement pattern of the commote of Laugharne is provided by an Inquisition of I307.3 This reveals that in the commote, a neighbourhood of approximately 208 km2, there were twenty-six villages and hamlets (Fig. 2). Laugharne, the largest village, contained 242 ha of demesne land, composed of bundles of quillets in arable which lay intermingled with those of the tenants of the manor, 404 ha of pasture, and 5 ha of meadow. At the other extreme there were hamlets such as Honeycorse where there was only one carucate of land appurtenant to the settlement. In some instances the numbers of tenants were recorded. At Cyffig there were forty-four tenants sharing 'two carucates and a half' of arable land, plus an additional 113 ha, and a further 186 ha of demesne. At Castle Ely there were twenty-eight tenants working 6 carucates of land, while at Belliter and Maesgwrda twenty-four tenants worked 5 carucates, whereas at Marros twenty-six tenants held I5 carucates. In 1968 only Laugharne, Llansadurnen, Llanddowror and Pendine survive as nucleations: the other settlements have disappeared but their names remain attached to single farms (Fig. 2). Elsewhere in Wales various authors have recognized the division of Welsh society in the Middle Ages into bond and free communities, and have demonstrated the distinctive settlements and evolutionary tendencies associated with each stratum of society.4 Although the distinction between bond and free communities in Laugharne commote frequently became confused through the grants of beneficent landlords and other circumstances, the tenurial status

An Illuminated Charter of Free Warren, dated 1291

The charter which is illustrated in pl. xviii is a grant by King Edward I to Roger de Pilkington and his heirs of free warren in their demesne lands of Pilkington and elsewhere in the county of Lancaster. The grantee was the son of Alexander de Pilkington, whom he succeeded at some date after 1282. He was a knight of the shire for Lancashire in 1316; and an adherent of Thomas earl of Lancaster, being imprisoned after the battle of Boroughbridge, and dying shortly afterwards. In Feb. 1289–90 he was granted for his services in Gascony 100 li from the first wardships which fell in on the south side of Trent; and in June 1291 he was granted the present charter. In the following year he was summoned to Lancaster to show to the justices itinerant by what warrant he claimed free warren in Pilkington and elsewhere, and he successfully exhibited to them the actual charter which is the subject of this note.

The Inquisition of 1517. Inclosures and Evictions

Professor Ashley on The Character of Villein tenure, and its Relation to InclosureInherent Improbabilities of Professor Ashley's Theory: (I) From the Yorkist Position; (2) From the Tudor Policy; (3) From Absence of EvidenceThe Acts of 1488 and 1515 for Restraint of InclosuresLimits of the Commission of 1517The Returns of the Record Office and of the Lansdowne MS.IllustrationsAreas embraced in ReturnsAbsence of Uniformity in Returns. Examples. Inclosures: (1) By Tenants; (2) By LandlordsCharacteristics of the Returns for the Different CountiesSympathetic Description of EvictionsBoldness and Impartiality of the CommissionersThe Commissioners call Attention to the Losses of Tenants by InclosureLegal Position of Persons concerned mentioned in Yorkshire, where Persons evicted clearly not CopyholdersIndications of Tenure in Herefordshire, Hants, and Norfolk. No Sign of Evictions of CopyholdersInclosures of Demesne Lands by Farming Tenants, with and without EvictionsInclosures by Lords with EvictionsInclosures by CopyholdersWhat Class of Tenants were evicted? The Evidence supplied by the Herefordshire ReturnsThe Persons so described Tenants at Will at Common LawThe Gloucestershire Cases of Evictions of CopyholdersThe Commissioners' View of the Duke of Buckingham's ProceedingsReport of the Surveyors of the Duke of Buckingham's Estates. His Expropriations of FreeholdersThe Duke of Buckingham's Arbitrary Conduct a Cause of his RuinCorroborative Evidence derived from the Statutes that the Persons evicted were not Copyholders.

Increased Rental of a Part of the Demesne Lands in the Manor of Belchamp, denominated Inlandes

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