Manorial Court Research Articles

The regulation of the rural market in waged labour in fourteenth-century England

AbstractThis article reconstructs the size and organisation of the rural market in hired labour in fourteenth-century England, providing a comparative reference point for arrangements elsewhere in medieval Europe. Quantitative assessment of 1,445 manorial court sessions from six manors casts new light on the English labour market, which was larger and less regulated than previously assumed and the government's wide-ranging labour legislation in the wake of the Black Death was novel in its scale and provisions. Contrary to received wisdom, manorial authorities made few efforts to regulate labour. The older view had placed an over-reliance on the early work of W.O. Ault and had ignored the significance of nil returns. The reasons for the lack of regulation, and its implications for our understanding of the complex interaction between pandemics, labour markets, and legal responses are explored. Finally, the study illustrates how legal responses to pandemics can have inadvertent yet profound consequences.

To the Question of Key Features of Court Proceedings in the Old Russian State

The article reflects the author’s approach to summarizing and identifying characteristic features of court organization and proceedings in the Old Russian state. In addition to the characteristic features of court organization and proceedings in the Old Russian State, the author also discusses the theories of organizing the judiciary power in Russian tribal principalities of law historian D.Ya. Samokvasov, and analyzes the establishment of the Old Russian court system. Several types of courts are discussed: a Princely court, a church court, a communal court, a manorial court; judicial offices, procedural status of some proceedings’ participants, their functions and roles in the administration of justice are described. The author also examines the problematic issue of the participation of the community in the administration of justice, singles out the stages of the court process according to “Kratkaya Pravda”, as well as the role of the Princely court in the Old Russian state.

Servile Migration and Gender in Late Medieval England: The Evidence of Manorial Court Rolls

Abstract Migration in medieval England was substantial, essential and mainly over short distances. Beyond this confident generalization, we know little about either the direction, life-histories or gendered patterns of rural migrants, and have no quantitative data. Yet, despite this, assumptions about peasant migration comprise central elements in two major debates about differential trajectories of social change in late-medieval Europe. The decline of serfdom and the emergence of the European Marriage Pattern in parts of northwest Europe — and by extension its superior economic performance to other regions of the Continent in the age of the Black Death — are attributed mainly to the preference of serfs and rural women to migrate disproportionately to towns. This article uses the most abundant and unambiguous source of peasant migration — the record of flown serfs in English manorial court rolls — to provide the first quantitative dataset for the proportion of serfs and women moving to towns. It also reassesses the importance of circular migration through qualitative life-histories. Hitherto, no comparable rural material from medieval Europe has been published. It argues that historians have under-utilized this material because of ill-founded doubts about its reliability and quality, while remaining cautious about its typicality. It deploys information gleaned from thousands of court rolls for twenty-six manors across Midland and eastern England to reveal that 33 per cent of serfs headed for towns, and explores subtle differences in regional and gendered patterns of migration. The implications of the findings for the wider debates are discussed.

‘Open’ or ‘Closed’? Participation in English Manorial Presentment Juries, c.1310–c.1600: A Quantitative Approach

Abstract Historians of both the medieval and early modern eras have characterised the governing structures of rural communities as being dominated by local elites. However, interpretations are hampered by a lack of clear criteria against which to evaluate whether a village-governance regime was ‘open,’ and characterised by wide participation, or ‘closed’, and characterised by the narrow restriction of office to an elite group, making it difficult to draw comparisons across time and space. This article uses a set of quantitative methodologies to solve this problem. It examines presentment juries in the manorial court, a governing institution which straddles the late medieval and early modern period, in three case-study communities for the period from 1310 to 1600. By applying four measures of participation, the article reveals that post-Black Death juries were characterised by a nuanced system of restriction. They were open in the sense that a large proportion of the male population, drawn from a wide range of families, acted as jurors and there was a continuous turnover in jury panels. However, they were also closed in that a small group of prominent individuals and families served a disproportionately frequent number of times. The results also question an established narrative of increasing monopolisation of village governance by a new ‘middling sort’ over the sixteenth century. Instead, change over time and space reveals a variable set of trends, with no universal linear pattern. The inflexibility of manorial institutions, combined with local demographic regimes and trends in landholding, led to significant differences in political participation between communities.

Waifs and Strays: Property Rights in Late Medieval England

AbstractThis article provides new insights into long-standing debates on lord-tenant relations in medieval England and how they were negotiated through the manorial court. We examine an institution, which we term thestray system, that facilitated cooperation between lords and tenants to manage stray livestock. Specifically, we argue that the stray system is a clear example of a public good. In this context, the system was a social benefit provided by lords to their tenants as a collective. In a world where most of the population was dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods, any potential damage to a crop would have been of real concern. However, in managing the threat of wandering livestock, the property rights of owners had to be clearly protected to avoid disputes over ownership. The manorial court's management of strays provided an institution to resolve these countervailing pressures. Ultimately, that system helped to protect a community's arable land—the most vital source of income for lords and tenants alike—while simultaneously assuring the property rights of those who had lost important capital assets in the form of livestock.

“The Rust of Antiquity”?: Print Culture, Custom, and the Manorial Court Guidebooks of Early Modern England

Early modern England’s manor courts were local institutions controlled by landlords, operated by their stewards, and governed by customary law. They fulfilled a wide variety of legislative, punitive, and adjudicative functions regarding the regulation of community resources and the resolution of minor conflicts between tenants. Starting in the mid-sixteenth century, publishers in London began to print short, accessible manuals that explained how to operate these manor courts. The eight manor court guidebooks published in English from 1561 to 1666 that are examined in this article illustrate the important role that manor courts continued to play in daily life. But their publication also contributed to the codification, and eventually the gradual corrosion, of localized customs that formed the foundation of the courts’ jurisdiction. Custom and communal memory continued to play a large role in the organization of early modern English society, but these unwritten customs were increasingly in tension with broader cultural impulses towards codification and uniformity that were reinforced by the published guidebooks. The impact of these guidebooks was ultimately to delimit the jurisdiction of the courts, encourage the professionalization of court officials, diminish the significance of local customs, and confirm the authority of landlords by articulating their positions as local leaders. Manorial court guidebooks are useful illustrations of how the educated elite in early modern England saw customary law as a necessary but old-fashioned form of justice without a clear role in the country’s legal system in the future.

Etude on Comparative Source Studies: Example of Medieval English Manor

The paper offers a number of problems connected with specificity and comparative characteristics of manorial records — surveys and court rolls of medieval England. Manorial surveys as a basic type of records include various data concerning lands, tenements, and rents of English peasants, entry fines, heriots, enclosures, different social types of peasantry, etc. A number of them have been thoroughly researched by Russian historians, while manorial court rolls haven’t been yet researched enough. Manorial court rolls if compared with manorial surveys, are sources of another type. They represent everyday life of English medieval peasantry, including its legal aspects as well as crucial role of manorial custom in the relations between peasants and manorial lords; order of manorial courts’ work and their types; crimes and punishments in the manors; borrowings from the system of Common law (e.g. the Jury), etc. Manorial court rolls have been substantially researched in England and in the USA by both historians and legal scholars. This article also deals with the problem of interpretation of numeric and legal “languages” of manorial records.

Judith M. Bennett, A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader and the World of English Peasants Before the Plague. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021, 196pp, 2 maps, 27 b/w figs.

Abstract: This book is dedicated to the fourteenth-century female peasant Cecilia Penifader, whose life Bennett traces through the manorial court records of Brigstock and medieval mentalities. Although certainly not the only woman to appear in these records (see the sidebar in chapter 1), Cecilia’s activities are exceptionally well documented (16). This makes her a good case study “to approach, in an intimate way, the ordinary lives and communities of medieval peasants.” (17)

Felony Forfeiture at the Manor of Worfield, C.1370–C.1600

ABSTRACTFelony forfeiture has recently received attention by historians working in both politico-legal and economic traditions. However, its history within the context of local lordships remains underexplored. By utilizing an exceptionally rich set of cases recorded in the court rolls of the manor of Worfield for the period c.1370–c.1600, this article explores the exercise of the franchisal rights to felons’ goods of one manorial lord. It demonstrates that these rights were extensive, and their application provides an excellent opportunity for historians to reconstruct the material living standards of late medieval villagers. It argues that the legal context of the manorial court makes the lists of goods recorded exceptionally valuable, in that the lives of the felons who owned these goods can be explored, highlighting this through one detailed case study. The conclusion also emphasizes the importance of considering the collaboration of tenants in the manorial forfeiture process, and that this was probably a crucial element in the success of seigniorial enforcement of this franchise.

Mapping peasant discontent: trespassing on manorial land in fourteenth-century Walsham-le-Willows

ABSTRACTIn recent years, it has largely been the domain of the landscape archaeologist to uncover and analyse the physical terrain of the late medieval manor. This has provided much material for the examination of ideas of rural power, control and social organisation. Considering the morphology of the settlement and adjacent fieldscape, it is rare, however, to reflect upon the views of the peasantry, who would after all have made up the majority of the population of rural communities. Using evidence gathered from fourteenth-century manorial court rolls, this study examines peasant attitudes to the rural landscape from an historical perspective through the analysis of incidences of trespass on demesne and peasant land in the Suffolk vill of Walsham-le-Willows. Unusually, these documentary sources frequently make reference to the specific location of peasant trespass allowing for a quantitative investigation that reveals something of the motivation behind these seemingly petty and notionally accidental incidents. Traditionally, cases of trespassing on neighbouring land have been considered only fleetingly by historians, since it is generally believed that many incidents were the result of accidental damage by wandering livestock, or that manorial officials used court fines as a means of licensing access. This study shows that the reality was far more complex, and that there was a range of motivational stimuli for these acts.

Conflict and Revolt: The Bishop of Ely and his Peasants at the Manor of Brandon in Suffolk c. 1300-81

AbstractUsing the evidence of manorial court records, this paper examines in detail the developments in the relationship between the Bishop of Ely and his peasants at the manor of Brandon leading up to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Increasing levels of discontent among the peasantry can be observed across the period. This is expressed in rising reported numbers of various cases in the court rolls, such as non-compliance with the court, labour refusals, trespasses and cases of foot-dragging. This rising level of conflict, some open, some more hidden, can be seen as evidence both for increasing seigniorial concern to assert various jurisdictional rights, and the peasants’ increasing willingness to test the boundaries of seigniorial dominion, leading eventually to their participation in the Rising in East Anglia.

Land and Family: Trends and Local Variations in the Peasant Land Market on the Winchester Bishopric Estates, 1263-1415, by John Mullan and Richard Britnell

The land market has often been identified as the cornerstone of medieval agrarian society. As immovable property was the most important economic asset, with significant jurisdictional implications for both lords and their free and unfree tenants, transactions in land are a significant feature in a variety of manorial documents, such as manor court rolls, accounts, or in this case, the Winchester Pipe Rolls. Lords were generally very keen to keep track of their landed wealth and were often tolerant of peasant land markets as long as these were conducted properly through the manorial court, involving the notification as well as the formal licensing of individual transfers by seigneurial agents. This being the case, land transfers offer valuable insights into rural society. By studying the land market it is possible to explore topics as disparate as the relationship between lords and peasants on the one hand and the status of women in peasant society on the other. The land market can also illuminate developments of leaseholds in the later middle ages, the weakening of seigneurial power, and therefore feudalism, as well as the coming of agrarian capitalism, can also be examined through the study of land transfers.

A Mute Gospel. The People and Culture of the Medieval English Common Fields. By Sherri Olson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2009. 242 pp. $75.00)

Studies of cultural, and to a certain extent, social history often tend to carry subjective character, resulting in subjective interpretations. The current study by Sherri Olson, dealing with the cultural life of two late-medieval parishes in Huntingdonshire, is one such recent example. In her monograph, Olson aims to “gain a more balanced view of medieval society by considering how peasants thought about themselves and their world as revealed in English manorial court rolls.” In a lengthy introduction (pp. 1–49), Olson exposes her methodology, key-questions, and concepts that serve her in her study of late-medieval village culture. In Chapter One (pp. 52–91), the author speaks of “ritual” and “performance” at local manorial courts, which turned into a “theatric arena”, during sessions. Chapter Two (pp. 92–123) deals with (mostly sur-)names, with a particular attention to women's surnames and the relation of the latter to the social status of their bearers. Olson concludes that surnames tended to be dynamic, changing over and sometimes within generations. In Chapter Three (pp. 124–148), Olson considers “pragmatic literacy” of Huntingdonshire peasants, their access to and reliance on contemporary Latin documents, which provided safeguards of their personal status. In Chapter Four (pp. 149–177), the author studies the history of trespasses (transgressiones, in Latin) from the late thirteenth until the late fourteenth centuries, showing dynamics of their nature and meaning and concluding that in the post-Black Death period, there was an increasing number of trespasses not only on the demesne, but also within the tenancy. In Chapter Five (pp. 178–200), Olson surveys the shift in naming landscape elements (fields, crofts, etc.), after the Black Death. She argues that after the pestilence, more and more villagers assigned their own surnames to the landscapes. In the conclusion (pp. 201–6), Olson reminds the reader that it is impossible to understand medieval peasants, unless we understand how they thought and acted.

Skjern – storgods og magtcenter fra middelalder til renæssance

Skjern A mighty manor and center of power from the 14th to the 17th centurySkjern Castle is mentioned for the first time in a document from AD 1340, where it appears under the name ‘Karmark.’ This wasthe name later given to an important subordinate (home) farm. In 1340, the castle was the property of the powerful nobleman Peder Vendelbo, but under the control of the counts of Holstein as part of the ongoing struggles concerning control over Denmark. Peder Vendelbo regained his castle shortly afterwards, and it very probably remained in his family for the remainder of the century, even though nothing is directly known about the castle and estate during this period. The family remained extremely powerful and held very high office.In AD 1400 or 1401, Hans Podebusk, a member of a very powerful family, inherited Skjern through his previous marriage to the late Arine Vendelbo. Another of Peder Vendelbo’s heirs made claims and in 1409 it was arranged that Hans’ son Henning Podebusk and Kirsten Falk, heir to the other claimant, should marry and have Skjern. This arrangement provides us with the information that the estate must have comprised c. 100 tenant farms plus property given to Henning’s sister Johanne.Contrary to his father and the Vendelbos, Henning Podebusk held no high political position. During a war with Holstein, he was taken prisoner in 1431 or 1432 and a very high ransom was demanded. This was probably the primary reason for a drastic decline in the position of the family. After the death of Henning Podebusk, both his widow and four daughters married men of the lower gentry, despite their aristocratic descent, and their properties crumbled. They also lost Skjern, but we do not know how this occurred.From 1464, one of the mightiest men of the time, Lord High Steward Erik Ottesen Rosenkrantz, is known to have been in possession of Skjern. But the actual change of lord very probably happened some years before. In 1474 the king recognised Erik Ottesen as sole proprietor, and during the final years of his life (1495-1503) Skjern was his official residence. Sources dating from c. 1525 and later make it possible to reconstruct the estate at the time of the death of Erik Ottesen Rosenkrantz. It then comprised the entire parishes of Skjern and Vester Velling (c. 40 farms in all) and a further c. 110 farms in the remaining parts of the surrounding districts of Middelsom and Sønderlyng (c. 25% of all farms in the area), plus probably another c. 50 more scattered farms lying further away. Furthermore, the lord of the manor possessed the jus patratus over the two village churches of Skjern and Vester Velling, and these parishes were made a private manorial court district – both privileges highly exclusive in the Denmark of the time.In addition to this, Erik Ottesen Rosenkrantz also functioned as royal district governor (lensmand) of the district. His father had already built up a solid position as governor of 5-6 districts in the area in the 1450s, and control over the three most important of these was passed on to Erik Ottesen. In this way, the private castle of Skjern functioned de facto in the same way as royal castles: as the seat of the royal administration of the district.After the death of Erik Ottesen, the Skjern estate was divided up among many heirs, but the eldest son Niels Eriksen took over the nucleus: Skjern Castle, the properties in the two central parishes with all their pertaining privileges and the position of district governor over the surrounding districts of Middelsom and Sønderlyng. This property and position remained with his heirs until 1562. By that time, the estate was split up among several heirs and its position as seat of royal administration had come to an end. In the subsequent century the castle was given up and the manor completely disintegrated. Even though a new manor was established in 1692, it never regained the size and position it had held from 1340 to 1562. Anders BøghCarsten Porskrog RasmussenInstitut for Historie og Områdestudier Aarhus Universitet

Landholding, Inheritance, and the Seasons: Reading Women and Space in Fourteenth-Century Manorial Court Rolls

Landholding, Inheritance, and the Seasons: Reading Women and Space in Fourteenth-Century Manorial Court Rolls

Le marché foncier de la noblesse dans le district de Łuck de la voïvodie de Volhynie 1566-1599

ResumeL’article analyse les registres des tribunaux territoriaux et châtelains de la voivodie de Volhynie de la seconde moitie du xvie siecle du point de vue de l’histoire de la propriete fonciere noble. Il determine les types de transactions (contrats de vente, hypothecaires, de bail, d’echange et de donation) au moyen desquelles s’effectuait la redistribution de la propriete fonciere entre les membres de la noblesse, dans le cadre du district (powiat) de Łuck. Il resulte de cette etude que la part de la propriete des princes vers la fin du xvie siecle est restee a peu pres stable (38 % de l’ensemble des proprietes nobles), tandis que les « seigneurs » (pany), principaux beneficiaires du processus de concentration, possedaient 52 % de la superficie totale et les hobereaux (plur. ziemianie) 10 % seulement.

‘Ancient custom time out of mind’: copyhold tenure in the west country in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

AbstractCopyhold tenure for a number of lives, regulated by manorial custom, was by far the most common form of landholding throughout much of the West Country during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was only gradually replaced by leaseholds for a term of years during the eighteenth century. Manorial custom, the body of local law and traditional usage, hallowed by long use and enforced in the manorial court, governed all aspects of farming practice, transfer of holdings, entry fines, rents, heriots, rules of cultivation, access to common grazing, wood, stone, fuel and the rights of widows. This paper uses examples from Wiltshire and Dorset to show the great variety of manorial customs, the effect these had on the lives of copyhold tenants and the problems which some long-established customs could cause for landowners.

ANNE REIBER DEWINDT, EDWIN BREZETTE DEWINDT. Ramsey: The Lives of an English Fenland Town, 1200-1600. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press. 2006. Pp. xiii, 455. With CD-ROM. $79.95

The small Huntingdonshire town of Ramsey must surely be one of the very best documented medieval English communities, and its status as an abbey-town that remained unincorporated even after the Dissolution makes it an obvious exemplar of a very common urban type. Both authors' long-standing association with the book's particular methodology, and their many years of work on the extensive documentation of the Ramsey Abbey estates, lend Anne Reiber DeWindt and Edwin Brezette DeWindt's book the air of a valedictory for the Raftis school of English medieval social history (the approach established by Fr. Ambrose Raftis at Toronto's Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies in the 1960s). Based initially on the rich survival of manorial court rolls and similar documents pertaining to the Ramsey Abbey estates, this long-term research venture produced a number of finely detailed and path-breaking studies of medieval manorial and small town governance and society. Taken together, they demonstrated the effective use of manorial records at the micro level, vastly enhancing our understanding of that fundamental medieval English milieu as they did so.

Small Fields and Wet Land: Inheritance Practices and the Transmission of Real Property in the Romney Marshes, c. 1150–1350

How did the inheritance strategies of peasant society find expression in the landscape in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? What was the influence of partible inheritance, a customary system in which land was divided between all sons, or in their absence, all daughters? Partible inheritance in Kent has received little study over recent years, in contrast to other parts of eastern England. Yet it has acquired great weight as a simple explanatory mechanism for many aspects of the Kentish landscape: the suggestion of an early peasant land market, the size of peasant holdings, and the field-system. Inheritance practices in Kent have often been regarded as unchanging over centuries. This article argues that, in fact, they must be examined in relation to family, household and tenure under specific conditions. Deeds of the manors of Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, provide new ways to examine structural changes at this early period, whereas studies of other areas have largely utilised manorial court rolls from the later Middle Ages. The locality investigated is the Romney Marshes. These marshes formed a distinctive pays within Kent, partly because of the presence of the Cinque Ports and other smaller ports. This study aims to stimulate discussion not only about the particularities of landscape and inheritance in this pays but also in other parts of Kent and of England (Draper 2003a).

Social control and the hue and cry in two fourteenth-century villages

This paper seeks to explore aspects of peasant community policing and keeping order in two fourteenth-century villages. The raising of the hue and cry was not only an important tool for policing local communities, it was also a communal ritual. The cases which caused the hue and cry to be raised, and which were then recorded in the manorial court rolls, can reveal a great deal about peasant attitudes to different types of offending behaviour, as well as local mechanisms of social control. At the same time such cases can be explored for peasant attitudes to gender, gender roles as well as peasant attitudes to seigniorial authority. Discrepancies in offending behaviour between men and women can be evaluated and compared between two manorial communities. Similarly peasant communities appear to have applied some degree of discretion in their dealing with particular offences, by, for instance, not drawing attention to some of them by raising the hue and cry. These issues allow us important insights into peasant mentalities and attitudes to order, disorder, gender and seigniorial authority.