Medieval manors and their records
People often use the word 'manor' to mean a manor house. The manor was actually a country estate, which was run from the manor house. So manorial records can tell us about other buildings on the estate, as well as the main house. Don't expect detailed information though. Medieval records tend to give tantalising glimpses rather than full descriptions.
In the Middle Ages land ownership was tied to national security. Under the feudal system all land was owned by the king. He granted territories to his earls and barons in return for military aid in need. They in turn granted lands to men who fought for them. Thus the land and its people could be protected without a standing army. The system broke down in the later Middle Ages and feudal tenure was finally abolished in England, Ireland and Wales in 1660.
The basic administrative unit was the manor. Ideally a manor was enough land to support a cavalryman - a knight's fee. He needed not only food and clothing for himself and his family, but armour, weapons and horses. The acreage needed varied according to the quality of the land. England had about 5,000-6,000 knights' fees.
It was natural for a son to follow in his father's footsteps, taking over a manor and the duty to fight. But once it was accepted that fees were inherited, then a manor could be held by a disabled man. Or it could be divided between daughters. So it might be more convenient to commute military service to a money payment. Over the centuries this gradually became the norm. So knighthood was not inherited with the manor. As a code of chivalry developed in the Middle Ages, so the prestige of the knight rose, and with it the expense of maintaining armour and trappings. Knighthood became an honour, but one that some manorial lords preferred to avoid. Even today a knighthood remains an honour to an individual person. It is not inherited. The lord or lady of a manor was simply the person who held it. Manorial lordships are not part of the peerage.
Those holding manors direct from the Crown were called tenants-in-chief. Mainly these were barons and earls. In 1086 they held half of England. However the king kept about a fifth in his own hands. His manors could be granted direct to knights, who would then be tenants-in-chief. The rest of the English manors were held by the Church - mainly by monasteries or cathedrals.
Manorial administration and its records
The lord of the manor kept some land in demesne - farming it himself. The rest he let, or left as common pasture and wasteland. (For more details and a generic plan, see Wikipedia: Manorialism.) There were two types of manorial tenant: villein and free. The freeman held land by deed and paid a fixed money rent. After centuries in which the rent remained unchanged while its value fell, such rents were nominal. The villein worked on his lord's land for certain days in return for his own.
All tenants had to attend the manorial court, held usually in the manor house. (House names like Westbury Court are reminders of those days.) The lord or his representative presided. From the 13th century onwards the business done was recorded on court rolls. That included the lord's decisions on which villein would hold what land. As it became usual for the villein to be given a copy of the entry in the court roll relating to his holding, such a tenure became known as copyhold. In Tudor times copyholds began to be replaced by leaseholds. The 1922 Law of Property Act finally abolished copyhold tenure. Because manorial rolls might be needed as evidence of former copyhold tenure, it was decreed in 1924 that all manorial documents should be under the superintendance of the Master of the Rolls, who set up a Register of Manorial Documents to record their ownership and location. This is now held by the National Archives (see Primary Sources below).
Not all manors had a resident lord. A lord who held several manors might chose to live in one, and place a resident bailiff in charge of each of the others. Or the demesne farm could be let on a leasehold. In either case a chief house for the manor would still be needed, but it might be known as the barton, grange or manor farm. The manorial lord not only built the manor house, but frequently founded a church beside it or chapel within it. He could be involved in much other building in the manor too - see villages. Any building expenses would be recorded in the manorial accounts.
Sometimes a survey of the lord's land would be made. A medieval survey was not a map, but a written record of property, listing tenants and their acreages, rents and/or services to the lord. Little if any mention of the tenants' houses can be expected, but the manorial mill should be listed. One type of survey - the extent, made on the death of any manorial lord or baron holding land directly from the Crown, did briefly describe the manor house and its surrounding farm buildings. A detailed inventory including contents might be made for special purposes, but medieval examples are very rare. (For later inventories see wills.)
Where to find manorial records
Do not expect an unbroken run of manorial records from medieval to modern. The pattern is more usually patchy survival. Be prepared to find that nothing survives. Those in Crown hands are not as well preserved as we might expect. Those of institutional landowners, such as cathedrals, monasteries or colleges, were well kept in the Middle Ages and may survive in long runs today where the institution itself survives, or where monastic archives were handed over to a particularly retentive owner at the Dissolution. The records of Glastonbury Abbey are unusually complete; they have been preserved in the archive of the Thynn family at Longleat since the 16th century. Those of some other monastic houses have been lost entirely.
Secondary sources:
- Bailey, M., The English Manor c.1200-c.1500 (2002). Describes the origins, structure and evolution of the manor and its records with translations of, and commentaries upon, each type of document.
- Barsby, A. W. and C., Manorial Law (1996).
- Davenport, F.G., A Classified List of Printed Original Materials for English Manorial and Agrarian History during the Middle Ages (1964).
- Ellis, M., Using Manorial Records (PRO Publications 1997).
- Harrison, C., Manor Courts: a bibliography and a vocabulary, both in a choice of .pdf or .doc format.
- Harvey, P.D.A., Manorial Records, British Records Association, revised edn. (1999).
- Stuart, D., Manorial Records: An introduction to their transcription and translation (1992).
- National Archives leaflets: Manor and Other Local Court Rolls ; Manorial Records in The National Archives
- Watt, H., Welsh Manors and their Records (2000).
Primary sources
- Manorial records can be found in local record offices and the National Archives. Those for England and Wales can be traced through the Manorial Documents Register. The index for manors in all Wales, and within England the counties of Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Cumberland, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Hampshire with the Isle of Wight, Hertfordshire, Lancashire, Middlesex, Norfolk, Nottinghamshire, Shropshire, Surrey, Warwickshire, Westmorland, and the three Ridings of Yorkshire are available online.
- Online examples of manorial records are listed at Medieval English Genealogy: Manorial Records.
Crown Records
The Crown kept records of who held what land, in order to claim various feudal dues. There was an additional layer of administration for manors which lay within a designated royal forest, which was not necessarily a solidly forested area, but one in which royal hunting took place. Whole counties were at one time subject to forest law. See J. Langton and G. Jones (eds.), Forests and Chases of England and Wales, c.1500-c.1850 (2005), for which there is a companion website with maps. In addition crown records include property that passed through the hands of the Crown, and that held directly from the Crown.
- The Domesday Book and its satellites: a survey of the manors of England in 1086. Various editions.
- Liber Feodorum: The Book of Fees Commonly called Testa de Nevill, 2 vols. in 3 (1920-31). Contains copies c.1307 of various returns and lists preserved in the Exchequer relating to the holdings of feudal tenants.
- Rotuli Hundredorum Temp. Henry III et Edw. I [ed. W. Illingworth], 2 vols. (1812-18). Latin transcripts from the returns to 13th-century government enquiries including those of 1279-1280 into liberties and land-holding. Some extracts have been printed in translation, for example this survey of the manor of Alwalton, Huntingdonshire.
- Inquisitions and Assessments Relating to Feudal Aids, with Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, A.D. 1284-1431, 6 vols. (1899-1920).
- Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem (Henry III-Edward III, Henry VII) supplies brief details of the estates of deceased tenants-in-chief. Volume 1 : Inquisitions Post Mortem, Henry III (1904) and Volume 2: Inquisitions Post Mortem, Edward I (1906) are available at British History Online. Extents attached to inquisitions post mortem are in the National Archives, which has an online guide to inquisitions post mortem.
- Calendar of Charter Rolls, vols 1-6 (1903-1927) gives abstracts of grants made by the sovereign to corporations and individuals from 1226-1516. From 1516 this type of grant took the form of letters patent.
- Calendar of Patent Rolls provides abstracts of the enrolled copies of letters patent, starting with the reign of Henry III, which announce royal acts of diverse kinds, including grants and leases of land.
- Calendar of Close Rolls gives abstracts of the enrolled copies of letters of the sovereign to individuals, which include the delivery of their landed inheritances to heirs and assignment of dowers to widows. Private deeds could be enrolled for safe custody on the back of the close rolls. They are especially numerous from 1382. The Calendar of Close Rolls is online to subscribers at British History Online.
- Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of Henry VIII, vols. 1-21 and Addenda, include abstracts of patent rolls and close rolls. This series includes grants (i.e. sales) of manors which had belonged to the dissolved monasteries. Online at British History Online.
- CIRCLE: A Calendar of Irish Chancery Letters c. 1244 - 1509 brings together all known letters enrolled on the Irish chancery rolls during the Middle Ages (1244–1509). The Irish chancery was the office of the great seal of the king used in Ireland. It produced two series of enrolments: patent and close rolls.
- The Parliamentary Survey of the Duchy of Cornwall, ed. N.J.G. Pounds, 2 vols. Devon and Cornwall Record Society New Series, vols. 25 and 27 (1982, 1984). Survey of 1649 of the Duchy's manors in Cornwall and Devon.
- Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, vols. 1-6: A catalogue of the ancient deeds held by The National Archives. Online at British History Online.
Parish and manorial histories
Local history can be colourful but unreliable. Place no faith in statements made without a source supplied. You can track down local history via bibliographies listed under local listory, or in the catalogues of local studies libraries. A few general hints:
- Parish histories generally include manorial history. In many cases parish and manor were coterminous, the manorial lord having built the church for his manor and so created the parish. However it is not always so straightforward. The subdivision of manors or grants of land could result in two or more manors within one parish. For example see A Gazetteer of Cornish Manors by Cornwall Record Office and Ian Mortimer's Guide to the Manors of Devon.
- Journals of local historical or archaeological societies often include parish and manorial histories.
- County histories include parish and manorial histories. For England the standard is set by the Victoria County History, which supersedes the older county histories, but it remains incomplete.
- In recent years there has been a wave of inter-disciplinary settlement studies which combine documentary sources with archaeological and/or standing building evidence. Some focus on specific manors, for example: J. Lyttleton and T. O'Keeffe (eds.), The Manor in Medieval and Early Modern Ireland (2005).