Chapter 8

MANORIAL RECORDS

Manorial records are probably the most single important source for family historians for the centuries prior to the establishment of parish registers in the sixteenth century. They record the largest number of names and include those of people of quite humble social origin, which for this period few other documents, saving the poll tax records, do. However they are probably one of the most underused archives by family historians, partly because some are deterred by the palaeography and Latin, and there is more on this matter in Appendix 1. The manorial records for the place where your immediate post-1538 ancestors resided would be the best place to begin your search.

England was made up of manors in Anglo-Saxon times and this division persisted, albeit with many changes, until its abolition in 1922. William I’s famous Domesday survey was a record of manors held in 1086. A manor was a geographical and economic unit of land, and they came in various shapes and sizes. It was not always synonymous with parish. For example, the manor of Fulham, held by the Bishop of London in 1086, was made up of numerous parishes: Acton, Ealing, Chiswick and Fulham. Many of these were subdivided into sub-manors. Manors were not owned, but held by a lord, who might be female or a cleric or a knight. All land was technically held by the monarch, who allocated most of it to the mighty subjects of his realm, bishops and secular lords, in return for their military support. In turn they let out manors to their chief followers, often knights or clergy of the middling rank. Many of these tenants held several manors, and most of these were supervised by a bailiff; few had manor houses which are usually associated with manors.

Each manor was divided into the lord’s own land, called the demesne, land that was held by the lord’s tenants, and finally common land and wasteland. There were two types of tenant. First, there were the villeins, who worked on the demesne for part of their time, in return for their tenancy. Then there were the freemen who held their tenancies by the payment of a cash rent to the lord. On the tenant’s death a sum, known as a heriot, had to be paid to the lord. For the heir to enter into the property, an entry fee, known as a relief, had to be paid to the lord. These tenants often made up the juries in the manorial courts. Some tenants held land by both forms of payment. Villein tenure evolved into a copyhold tenancy (so called because both lord and villein had a copy of the latter’s title to his tenancy) in which labour services were replaced by rent, a process speeded up by the Black Death of the fourteenth century. Most tenants held land by copyhold tenure, and copyhold land could not be sold. After a tenant’s death, the lord could grant it to anyone else or could allow the heir to take it over. Much depended on manorial custom, which varied between manors.