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Abstract
This paper rebuts Pamela Slocombe’s suggestion that manorial lords were principally responsible for building the houses of their customary (copyhold) tenants in the later Middle Ages. After briefly reviewing the evidence for landlords’ involvement in freeholds, leaseholds and urban buildings, taking note of previous studies of documentation of peasant building, and omitting published manorial accounts that say nothing about buildings, it examines published accounts covering fourteen widely scattered estates to show that normally nothing was spent on customary tenements. Original MS accounts are then analysed to show that lords’ expenditure on customary structures was restricted to a small minority of buildings on a minority of manors of a minority of lords, for short periods in the fifteenth century only, and for exceptional reasons.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
NOTES
Notes
1 Slocombe, “To beg a tree,” 32–7.
2 Harvey et al., “Short Notices,” 880 (emphasis added) [review by the author].
3 These expressions are used interchangeably here, since tenants’ copies of court roll survive from the first decade of the period onwards. ‘Copyhold’ indicates the nature of the tenant’s title deed, ‘customary’ the terms of his or her tenure from the lord of the manor. It was only in the early modern period, and in only part of the country, that copyholds were normally for three lives, as Pamela Slocombe claims.
4 Slocombe, “To beg a tree,” 36.
5 “To beg a tree,” 36; N. Hill, review of Alcock and Miles, “The Medieval Peasant House in Midland England,” Vernacular Architecture 44, 114.
6 Alcock and Currie, “Documentary History,” STE-C, 7–8.
7 Langdon, Mills in the Medieval Economy, 15.
8 Tearle, Accounts of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, Luton, xlviii–xlix.
9 Horrox, Selected Rentals and Accounts of Medieval Hull, 100–5, 107, 111ff.
10 E.g. Currie, “Larger Medieval Houses,” 127, 224.
11 Sabin, Some Manorial Accounts of St Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol, 95–6.
12 Currie, “Behold, I tell you a mystery”; Slocombe, “To beg a tree,” 35.
13 Watkins, A Treatise on Copyholds, 238, 289.
14 Watts, “Medieval Tenant Housing.”
15 Canterbury Cathedral Archives, CCA-Dcc-ChAnt/L/179, /245–7 (tenants’ copies of court roll; it has not been possible to check them against the court rolls at Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Archives Service).
16 Hatcher, “The Great Slump of the Mid-fifteenth Century.”
17 Dyer, Lords and Peasants, 319.
18 Hare, A Prospering Society, 144 does not give precise dates; nor does the published catalogue of Winchester College Muniments; but they can be established to within a year or two by comparing the references with those for the list of demesne lessees in Hare, “Durrington,” 137–47.
19 Dyer, “English Peasant Buildings,” 31.
20 TNA, SC 6/743/14, 16; SC 6/744/1, 5, 11, 13, 19, 24; SC 6/745/3, 5, 9, 11–12, 14–16, 18, 22; SC6/746/1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 13–14, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25; SC 6/747/1, 4, 6–9.
21 TNA, SC 11/814, /823 (damaged).
22 Galloway, Murphy and Myhill, Kentish Demesne Accounts, viii.
23 E.g. Langdon, Walker and Falconer, “Boom and Bust.”
24 Campbell, “Global Climates,” 94.
25 Hall, Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester 1208–1209; Holt, Pipe Roll of the Bishop of Winchester 1210–1211; Page, Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester 1301–2 and 1409–10. Numbers given here exclude boroughs.
26 P.R. 1210–11, 57, 131, 141. Domus is best translated “building,” and more often than not does not indicate a dwelling-house: cf. Mercer, “‘Domus Longa’ and ‘Long House’”.
27 P.R. 1409–10, 174.
28 Roderick and Rees, “The Lordships of Abergavenny, Grosmont, Skenfrith and White Castle: Accounts.”
29 Page, Wellingborough Manorial Accounts.
30 Farr, Accounts of the Wiltshire Lands of Adam de Stratton.
31 Britnell, Durham Priory Manorial Accounts 1277–1310.
32 Wilson and Gordon, Early Compotus Rolls of the Priory of Worcester; Hamilton, Compotus Rolls of the Priory of Worcester; Wilson, Accounts of the Priory of Worcester.
33 Midgley, Ministers’ Accounts of the Earldom of Cornwall.
34 Chibnall, Select Documents of the English Lands of Bec, esp. 158, 148, 174.
35 Lyons, The Compoti of Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.
36 Briggs, Surrey Manorial Accounts, 18–19, 34, 63, 76, 78.
37 Raban, Accounts of Godfrey of Crowland.
38 Redstone, “Westminster Abbey Muniments.”
39 Salzman, Ministers’ Accounts of Petworth.
40 Raine, The Account Rolls of the Priory of Finchale.
41 Hilton, Ministers’ Accounts of the Warwickshire Estates of the Duke of Clarence.
42 Beachcroft and Sabin, The Compotus Rolls of St Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol, for 1491–2 and 1511–12; Sabin, Some Manorial Accounts of St Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol.
43 James, Estate Accounts of the Earls of Northumberland, 1562–1637.
44 Willis, The Estate Book of Henry de Bray, xxiv–xxi, 49–54, 108–9. I am grateful to Professor Dyer for drawing my attention to Bray’s cottages.
45 Dyer, Lords and Peasants, 295.
46 Harvey, Westminster Abbey and its Estates, 273–4.
47 Westminster Abbey Muniments, 7447–61, 7463–522A; Alcock and Currie, “Documentary History,” STE-F, 9–13.
48 De Windt, The Liber Gersumarum of Ramsey Abbey, 9.
49 TNA, SC 6/877/2, /4-/14.
50 TNA, SC 6/878/6.
51 Staffs. Record Office, Stafford, D(W)1748/1/4.
52 Hodgson, Percy Bailiff’s Rolls of the Fifteenth Century, 24, 27, 32, 34, 38, 40–2, 67–73, 78, 85, 103.
53 Appointed July 1470, displaced October, resumed office by default April 1471 on his successor’s death: Doubleday and Howard de Walden, Complete Peerage, vol. 9, 89–92, 717–18.
54 Slocombe, “To beg a Tree,” 34.
55 Dyer, “English Peasant Buildings,” 22.
56 Slocombe, “To beg a Tree,” 33–44.
57 E.g. Astill, “The Long and the Short.”
58 Dyer, “The Midland Economy and Society, “1314–1348.”
59 Crosby, “Housing and the Local Historian (Part 1),” 232.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
C. R. J. Currie
C. R. J. Currie, Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London