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ABSTRACT
The paper examines issues of landscape, territory and common rights, with specific reference to the multi-township, multi-manor parish of Burton Agnes in the north-east Yorkshire Wolds. Burton was a territorial unit of considerable antiquity which survived as a distinct estate until the late twelfth century when it was split between coheiresses. This produced a complex territorial and tenurial situation, characterised in the later medieval period by ongoing conflicts over common rights between neighbouring manorial families on behalf of themselves and their various tenants. Crucially — given the lack of adequate commons governance structure — such conflicts proved not only almost impossible to resolve but also productive in documentary terms. This paper examines the far-reaching consequences of the 1199 division of the estate in two linked sets of sources: firstly, by using legal documents and estate records to examine conflicts about common rights in the parish moor in the later medieval period; and secondly and relatedly, by utilising standing buildings, landscape and documentary sources to interrogate the built landscape as a site to articulate territorial claims (including to rights and resources in the parish moor) and the patronage thereof by local manorial families. In this sense, the paper both traces the consequences of earlier territorial arrangements and explores the range of strategies by which local manorial families might make and mark territory in the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In doing so, the paper makes the case for writing ‘grounded’ historical geographies of the commons which both set individual commons within their wider temporal, spatial and territorial contexts and recognise them as always entangled within the broader politics and landscape of the parish.
Notes
1 The survival of two large bodies of estate records — for the Somerville/ Griffith manor at Burton Agnes and the St Quintin manor at Harpham — yields large numbers of medieval and early modern title deeds for the parish as well as agreements relating to the parish moor and legal papers concerned with disputes over its management. This includes transcriptions of evidence heard in the ecclesiastical and equity courts, for which the original pleadings survive at the National Archives. There are, however, few medieval manorial court records for the two main manors, although given that much of the management of the parish moor necessarily took place outside the manorial courts (on which, see the main body of the paper), this has not unduly limited the research undertaken here. The churches at both Burton Agnes and Harpham also retain considerable medieval fabric, as does the manorhouse at Burton Agnes. There is also very good landscape archaeological and cartographic evidence from the parish.
2 In what follows, for the sake of clarity, ‘Burton’ is used to signal the parish and preConquest estate, ‘Burton Agnes’ for the township, manor and village.
3 The relevant sheets of the Firstedition 1:10,560 Ordnance Survey maps were surveyed between 1849 and 1852, and published in 1854. The dates have been standardised here at c. 1850. I am grateful to May F. Pickles for information on this point.
4 See also Key to English Place Names: http://kepn. nottingham.ac.uk/. The þorp in Haisthorpe and þyrne in Thornholme are both indicative of peripheral or secondary settlement.
5 The eighthcentury Bishop of Hexham and York was born at Harpham, hence the dedication.
6 The wills of Harpham residents held at the Borthwick and/ or published in Testamenta Eboracensia support this point, as does the existence of the chantry chapel and medieval tombs.
7 Burton was unusual in this respect, only a handful East Riding parishes having surviving common fields at the time the Firstedition Ordnance Survey maps were surveyed.
8 Acreage of known moorland parcels calculated using Digimap and the c. 1850 Ordnance Survey First Edition 1:10,560 maps. The enclosure award of 1719 allotted 1,821 acres but this excluded parcels enclosed from the moor in the late medieval and early modern period (HHC, U DDWB/5/88).
9 The situation regarding rights in the turbary was slightly different with the tenants of individual townships restricted to cutting turves within specified plots. Thus the tenants of Burton Agnes had the right to cut turves from an area described as lying ‘from Owrom unto Carnaby Stone’ (U DDWB/5/49).
10 See also, U DDWB/5/2b of c. 1704–5, which reiterated the seigniory of the lords of Burton Agnes in relation to the early eighteenthcentury enclosure of Burton Moor.
11 No detention of deeds case could be identified in Chancery from searching the TNA Discovery catalogue. The deed between Alice de Merley and Agnes St Quintin must be dated sometime between c. 1199 when their brother Anselm de Stutville died and 1239 when Alice’s son Roger inherited (VCH Yorkshire East Riding II, p. 107).
12 See too U DDWB/5/27, for a grant of 1371 from Lady Joan ap Griffith to the Prior of Bridlington of a right of way across Burton Moor. This was to be 40 feet wide and ran between a bridge known as Schepbrig and Thornholme.
13 Indeed, at least nine new towers were built in the Yorkshire Wolds in the Perpendicular style and a further six churches have the top stage of their tower rebuilt or parapets or pinnacles in the latest fashion added. The towers are not easy to closely date on stylistic grounds alone, in part because the Perpendicular style remained relatively unchanged from its inception at Gloucester in the 1330s to its demise 200 years later. Moreover, there is little documentary evidence for most of the towers, though both Harpham and Burton Ages are an exception here (McDonagh 2007, pp. 296–314).
14 The tomb is most likely not in situ.
15 See HHC, DDWB/24/1 for the marriage settlement and DDWB/5/60 and 6/3 which refer to Agnes as the widow of Sir Gervase (Cal Inqs PM, 2nd series, Vol III, pp. 20–4, Henry VII, 1955, p. 87). Agnes died seised of the manor of Burton Agnes and property in Fraisthorpe, Great Kelk, Gransmoor, Thornholme, Beeford, Swaythorpe and Langtoft (Cal Inqs PM, 2nd series, Vol III, pp. 20–4, Henry VII (1955), pp. 65–6).
16 This is in contrast to the editor’s comment in Testamenta Eboracensia, where he simply noted that after her second husband’s death, Agnes ‘returned into her own country to die’ (TE III, p. 269).
17 This was Agnes’s stepson Sir Walter Griffith, who had been only a toddler when his own mother died and his father married Agnes.
18 This probably did not happen, in part because an incorrect license seems to have contributed to its later demolition.
19 These were replaced or recast in the early seventeenth century, and the surviving bells are dated 1610, 1617 and 1812 (VCH Yorkshire East Riding II, p. 227).