CHAPTER VI.
MANOR AND COURT ROLLS.

The oldest account of an estate is to be obtained, not from deeds of purchase and mortgage, but from its own private records, called court rolls, a most curious class of documents, puzzling to the antiquary because they contain local words obsolete and not recognisable through derivation. Manor rolls are a study in themselves, a subject hitherto overlooked. They give us an insight into the most primitive form of local government, showing the manner in which lawlessness and disregard of laws were kept under before a regular magisterial jurisdiction came into existence. The local manor court occupied the position and did the work now undertaken by the magistrates, County Court judges, and County Councils. When complaints are raised as to an excessive imposition of fines for trivial misdemeanours by any of these modern means of justice, I would advise the complainants to study some old court rolls, wherein may be read the fines imposed for offences no longer punishable. The villager was fined if he kept dogs or pigeons, for trespass in the woods, stealing brushwood, for illegal fishing, for fighting, for allowing animals to stray and become impounded. Nor, unless he was a freedman, was he allowed to marry or give in marriage without his lord’s permission. All this sounds very arbitrary and severe; in reality it probably was not so. The bond between landlord and tenant must have been a very close one. They were drawn into near connection one with another; the well-being of one meant the welfare of the other. Nor was the meting forth of justice left solely in the hands of the lord of the manor, but rather to the twelve jurymen who formed the court itself. Certainly this self-government opened a means for unfair influence and revenge of petty quarrels. This was guarded against as far as possible. A very common item brought before the court was the accusation of wrongful information laid by a man against his neighbour in direct opposition to the ninth commandment.

There were two sections of manor courts—the Court Leet and the Court Baron. The former dealt with offences committed by the tenantry, and contained much that is entertaining and curious; the other was occupied with the tenants and their holdings, of which they had every year to give account to the lord of the manor. Upon the death of a tenant, or the expiration of the lease, new presentments were made to the landlord for admission to the premises, or a fresh life added to the lease from time to time. In these rolls we find notices of heriots and other old services due from the tenants of certain lands; indeed, these old customs are not yet wholly extinct, though they have frequently fallen into abeyance. On some estates heriots are still due, but, as a rule, have for many generations been compounded for by a money payment, just in the same way that feudal service passed into small sums of money and finally died out, or eventually took the form of money rent.

On many farms it was part of the rent to give the landlord yearly, geese or cheese. In a small farm of ours in Cheshire the tenant had to give a cheese yearly, cart coals, keep a dog and a fighting-cock for his landlord.

The manorial history of England would carry us back very far did we attempt to trace it to its earliest beginnings. Perhaps the very first step towards it was the settlement of the Saxon tribes, who, in appropriating and distributing the land, laid the foundation of hereditary ownership. There is no rule or limit as to how many manors there might be in each parish. Clearly the parish was the older division of the two; nor can the creation of a manor be dated in any way, for many of the old manors were subsequently split up into two or more lesser ones. The affixes or manorial names are known to have, in some instances, varied with the family who held the land. Almost without exception these manorial names were directly derived from the possessors. Few are older than the Norman period, perhaps having supplanted those in existence previously. Where double parochial names are used, the first is usually Saxon, the affix being a Norman addition, showing the fusion of the two races, which, though living in close proximity, were yet totally distinct from each other.

During the Middle Ages manors were further subdivided, easily to be accounted for in this way: The owner of a manor was at first start the tenant of some wealthy and powerful nobleman, who, owning vast tracts of land, sublet it out in manors, which were after some generations bought outright, or looked upon almost as freehold. The tenant was the resident squire of the place, living on the land, and farming it with the assistance of his children and dependents. After a time the family grew up, the sons married and needed homes of their own. In those days no one moved far away from the birthplace. What was more natural than that the squire should provide homes for his children close around the old manor-house, and, dividing off the property by the manorial boundaries, give to each a portion for self-maintenance? This accounts for the large, old-fashioned farmhouses to be found in most country parishes. The history of each farm, if investigated, will furnish a curious proof of the conservatism with which certain boundaries were preserved, and the manors regarded as sections seldom subdivided except into recognised lesser manors.

Society was very primitive two or three hundred years ago. It was then possible to live comfortably and make a living out of the land. No foreign grain was imported to affect the prices of corn in country places. Competition was unknown, and the people led a quiet, uneventful existence, following in the footsteps of their forefathers. Gradually changes have come about. The old race of yeomen has died out; the few that are left make us forcibly regret that this should be the case.

The yeoman was a man of good education and long pedigree; he belonged to the largest section of English society, called ‘middle class.’ Agriculture was his profession; he seldom left home, consequently had few opportunities of spending money; the character and personal history of every human being on the place was intimately known to him, for the villagers lived and died in their native villages. The roads were bad, therefore traffic from place to place was restricted to what was absolutely necessary. Posts and passenger coaches were rarities, and when first started met with little patronage from the majority of the people.

To return to the manorial courts. These were held but once during the year. It was the annual audit of the freemen on the estate, the ‘Visus franciplegii,’ as the opening words of the court roll states.

Quarter sessions were held four times in the year, while the sheriff’s tourn took place half-yearly. These inquired into matters of public interest and public expense, whereas the manor court dealt with trivial matters pertaining to the manor itself. The sheriff’s tourn and the manorial court were almost identical in object; the first was the representative of the Crown dispensing justice to the King’s subjects; in a lesser radius and degree the lord of the manor had a similar office to fulfil.

Manors were ruled by custom, and customs varied in different places. The general aspect of a court roll will always be found to be identical. The older rolls are in Latin, but, like the deeds, the later ones are written in English. The earliest ones are literally ‘rolls’ closely written on parchment in the handwriting called by the French ‘minuscule.’

Every court roll has at its commencement the name of the manor written either above or on the margin. The opening words read thus: ‘Visus franciplegii cum curia.’ After this is the name of the lord of the manor, the date of the day and month, followed by the King’s name and the number of years since he ascended the throne.

Esson., on the margin, is the abbreviation for essonium, an excuse—namely, the jurymen who pleaded absence from the court. Following this are the names of the twelve jurymen present, and then the work begins.

In the older rolls the presentment of offences are the principal items; latterly only the tenants and their leases employed the attention of the court at its annual sitting.

The first thing to consider was usually the assize—licensing, so to speak, of bread and ale. By this means fraud and adulteration were held in check. The right of brewing ale was a privilege not to be infringed without penalty; the fine imposed was at the rate of 1d. for each illegal brewing; the offenders are generally women.

Any damage to crops or fences, highways needing repair, quarrels ending in bloodshed, neglect by which animals were permitted to stray and become seized by the hayward or pinder—all such offences are found chronicled in the court roll. Last of all is the sum total received in fines, signed by the names of the two officers appointed to superintend the assize.

A court roll is always written throughout in one handwriting, without any private marks or signatures. From the writing, they are generally the work of a professional scribe or clerk who must have had a regular education—first as a Latin scholar, secondly as an accountant, and thirdly probably learnt to write before he learnt Latin. Mistakes or erasures are seldom to be detected; therefore the rolls must have been carefully copied at leisure from rough notes made at the time; moreover, the spelling of the surnames is fairly constant, which would not be if written from dictation.

Up to the Reformation period the court rolls were cherished as being valuable records, providing standards for future reference; hence we find, until then, a fairly perfect sequence of these yearly rolls, after which a break occurs, and only a casual roll here and there is preserved. No guide to court rolls would be complete unless the oldest form of the Arabic numerals is given and explained.

The Roman numerals are the oldest method of writing figures in Europe, but gradually the so-called Arabic figures (really of Indian origin) were introduced, superseding the former style. To Gerbert, otherwise known as Pope Silvester II. (he died in 1003), is attributed their introduction from the East to the West; anyway, from the twelfth century, the Arabic numerals rapidly came into use. The 0 was not invented before the twelfth century. A curious resemblance is traceable between the figures of the alternate centuries. Our present style of figures has grown out of the older ones, but is bolder in outline and curve. The figure 5 has passed through most variation, while 6, 8 and 9 have scarcely altered at all.

It must be remembered that before 1752 the Old Style was still used in England. The year therefore commenced on March 25th instead of, as it does at present, on January 1st. When the calendar was corrected in 1752 eleven days were omitted, and September 2nd was followed by September 14th. The people bewailed it, and contemporary skits are numerous, echoing the popular cry of ‘Give us back our lost eleven days.’ On the Continent the alteration had taken place long before. In some English parish church registers we find confusion as to the actual year date to be used for the months between Christmas and Lady Day. This uncertainty may be observed before 1750. In many country places the old style was maintained long after the year 1752.

I have a very curious old calendar of 1483; in it the saints’ days are veritable red-letter days. Many of the saints named are unknown to us either by name or legend, but in court rolls only the principal saints’ days are mentioned as those on which the court sat.

Some months seem to have been more favoured with saints’ days than others. The following list, though by no means complete, gives the chief English saints:

The saints’ days were brought before the people in many ways—in the village feasts, or the dedication of churches, in the mural paintings which covered the church walls, and in the Christian names given at baptism. In the old rolls the date of the month is never mentioned, the principal feast-day nearest to it being used instead.

Saints’ days, as holidays, were probably the most convenient days for assembling together for business.