England Manors and Their Records - International Institute

Manors
A manor is a property for which the owner held a court for his copyhold tenants. Manors were often farms or multiple farms and could include other rural lands, but could also comprise a group of town houses (see Gibbens’ Cantlowes Otherwise Cantlers: A London Manor in the 1820s. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol 27 #3, page 119-122.). The land of a given manor was rarely coterminous with parish boundaries, either ecclesiastical or civil, and frequently contained a part of one parish, or parts of two or more parishes, not always contiguous to one another. One land owner might hold several manors and tenants might therefore transfer from one part of his estate to another—a point to remember when an ancestor suddenly appears in or disappears from a certain parish. A land owner could also hold freehold properties with tenants which were not part of any manor and hence held no court.

Some manors were small and the lord could be the occupier farming his own land, living in the home or barton farm or desmesne land. Other manors were much larger, up to 150 square miles, and here the land was leased out except for the lord’s demesne lands which he farmed himself, or let out at fixed rent to a bailiff, the latter being the commonest situation from the 17th century.

The manorial system had its origins in Saxon England, developed under the Norman kings, but did not cover the whole of England and so manorial records exist for some areas but not others. Manorial records are private rather than public although there are legal provisions for their custody. The Victoria County Histories, which can be found in larger libraries and on film, normally trace the ownership of manors but the series is not yet complete. A list of currently available VCH volumes is given in Researching English Contemporary Documents. TNA research guides L1 and L9 have good background information and help access what is available there, much of which is also available on film, of-course.

Estimates of the number of manors vary between 25,000 and 65,000 (Travers) whereas there are about 12,300 ancient parishes (Humphery-Smith 1995). Travers (Manorial Documents. Genealogists Magazine Vol 21 #1, page 1-10.) estimated the amounts of surviving manorial documents from samples from five counties. From this it can be seen that there is a greater chance of being able to use them for confirming, or replacing missing, parish register information as only a lucky few will be able to use them to continue a pedigree prior to 1538. Manorial records are the most reliable statements of ancestry (Humphery-Smith 1997) and should be sought out if at all possible.

Chart: Survival of Manorial Documents (from Travers)

Manorial Courts
The lord of the manor could hold two courts:


 * Court Baron This was obligatory and dealt with transference of copyhold land, enforcing local customs and agricultural practice and settling minor disputes and debts involving less than 40 shillings. The land records of courts baron are discussed in the section on Inheritance of Land, and Sale and Transfer of Land.


 * Court Leet There may also have been a court leet (including the view of frankpledge) which was essentially a subsidiary hundred court. It dealt with criminal offences such as murder, treason, rape, arson, counterfeiting and burglary, which it then referred on to the county assizes, as well as common law offences for which it levied punishments, and it also appointed some local officials.

In practice the two courts were usually held on the same day, one after the other, and recorded separately but often in the same manor court roll or book. All tenants of the manor had to attend and were fined (amerced) for not doing so. Although the customs of holding land varied greatly from manor to manor there were uniform standards of procedure and practice of record keeping, which simplifies their use by the researcher. The manorial system became extinct in 1922 on the demise of copyhold land, but many manors had replaced copyhold much earlier and no longer held courts. Other local courts, mention of which may be found amongst manor records, include:


 * Hundred (division of a county) courts
 * Pie Powder (market) courts from pieds poudreux = dusty feet.
 * Portmote (port) courts
 * Swainmote (forest) courts
 * Woodmote (woods) courts

Manorial and Estate Surveys
Detailed descriptive surveys and full local maps are both rare before 1550, however surveys with less detail are quite common from about 1350-1600 whereas maps are not. Some surveys contain brief extracts from much older documents and may even trace tenants back to the 14th century. A manorial survey may only be concerned with the lord’s demesne, describing the boundaries, manor house, park, parsonage, dovecote, windmill, woods, commons, greens, heaths or wastes, and fisheries. Some surveys only describe the copyholds and freeholds within the manor.

All kinds of interesting information may be given about schools, non-Anglican chapels, markets, fairs, the church and its advowson, glebe and tithes, newly drained marshland, timber, enclosure of commons or open fields, depopulation, disparking and so forth. Urban manorial surveys may constitute almost an early directory, street by street. The tremendous variety in the British landscape is well instanced by comparing manorial surveys from different areas. Beckett has further detail about using estate surveys together with other sources.

Surveys of manors and larger estates were often made upon change of ownership and may contain:

Customals A customal (or custumal) set out the customary rights and responsibilities of the lord and his tenants on a manor or monastic estate as a guide to the administrators. It included entry fines, rents payable and other customary dues and was renewed at fairly long intervals.

Extents and Valors An extent was a detailed survey and valuation of manorial or other estates at a given time, including the value of land, buildings, labour services, and rents paid in kind. A valor was a summary of the financial value of the holdings. Some documents called extents are more properly rentals as they give all the tenants names and individual rents and dues. Thus the Extenta Maner de Woodgredg nuper Priorat 1560 has been translated and transcribed by Breen as The Rentals of the Manor of the Prior of St. Mary Woodbridge, Suffolk. This contains hundreds of families and can be used to advantage with the parish registers which start in 1545.

Ministerial Accounts These are the annual accounts of income and expenditures by the steward, bailiff and other manorial officials. A related series are the accounts for the lands of dissolved religious houses, for which the court of augmentations was set up in 1536 (see TNA research guide D14).

Rentals These showed details of the rents collected in a manor or estate each year on specified quarter days, typically Lady Day and Michaelmas, but sometimes at Christmas and Midsummer. They give tenants’ names, nature of their tenure and amounts of rent paid and services due, but subtenants who actually occupied the property may not be listed. Rentals were much less frequently compiled than manor court rolls, usually only when a new lord of the manor took over. When using rentals one also has to note that a man could:


 * Sublease his land to another.
 * Hold freehold land in a different parish.
 * Lease other land in the same or a different parish.

Rents were formerly in kind and gradually changed to monetary payments, thus from 1762–1789 Sir Francis Dashwood paid rent of seven shillings and two pence, one hen and twelve eggs on a property to the lord of the manor of Crombury, Kent (manor court roll on . Chart: Rental Book—A Rentall for the Mannor of Chipping Barnet and East Barnet for the year 1707

Terriers
A terrier was a written description of a manorial lord or landed proprietor’s property by acreages and boundaries. They are especially useful when they give the names of fields and their abuttals, which are the adjoining fields and who holds them.

Glebe Terriers are a special terrier for the lands and holdings of the parish incumbent. They describe the parsonage house, the glebe land, payments, tithes, fees, the furnishings of the local church and how it is maintained, as well as procedures for appointment of the parish clerk and sexton, and their duties. Some are exceptionally chatty, for example the collection of about 75% of glebe terriers for Cornwall 1673-1735edited by Potts (A Calendar of Cornish Glebe Terriers 1673-1735. Devon and Cornwall Record Society, Exeter. New Series Vol 19. v.19. Here one finds 2,500 persons mentioned (and indexed) comprising tenants, donors, those evading tithes, and signatures of up to 45 parishioners on each one. Here are the minutiae of village life—a boon for the family historian. 

The survey of the West Country manors of Cecily, Marchioness of Dorset, Lady Harington and Bonville has been translated from the Latin and edited by T. L. Stoate (1979). This huge survey was taken in 1525 by Cecily’s surveyor Richard Phellyps and comprised 79 manors (although some were not truly such, being a few town tenements or parcels of land) and covered 30,000 acres, mostly in SE Devon and around Taunton in Somerset. This lady also owned property in nine other counties and in London. Stoate’s work includes a good introduction explaining the system, a 14-generation pedigree and indexes of places and persons. Information is given about:


 * A brief description of each holding.
 * What common rights the tenant had.
 * The yearly value of each type of land on the holding.
 * The entry fine, also levied when a new life was inserted, or one life exchanged for another, or for obtaining a reversion of the holding i.e. the right to pass it on to someone else.
 * The annual rent.

Stoate remarks that Cecily seems to have been a compassionate lady as she frequently remitted the fines and rents for the poor and elderly. Parts of the survey for West Kyngton, Wiltshire are quoted below. Chart: Manorial Survey West Kyngton, Wiltshire 27 August 1525

Further information on manorial surveys can be found in F. G. Emmison (Estate Maps and Surveys #4 in Guides to Records editd by Lionel M. Munby, 1972). A valuable translation and index of the Red Book of Worcester, a survey of the bishop’s manors of 12th-13th centuries including three or more successive tenants whenever changes were made, was edited by Hollings (The Red Book of Worcester: Containing Surveys of the Bishop's Manors and Other Records, Chiefly of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centurie, 1950).

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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course English: Land and Property Records including Manorial Documents and Maps offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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