Court Books
by Jean Agnew
Origins
The manorial system in England was the product of the Norman Conquest and feudalism. Very briefly, the King claimed most of the land and he granted great slices of it to his chief barons who swore fealty to him. They in turn granted parts of this land to their own followers, who in turn granted land to their followers, and so on, to form a pyramid with the king at the top. The basic unit of land was the manor: sizes varied, but most were divided into three large fields, and these were divided into strips. There was also one or more areas of common land. Tenants had a strip or more in each field and rights to graze cattle, dig peat, gather firewood, etc., on the common. There was a fixed three-year rotation of crops: wheat, rye, and barley in the first year, oats, beans, peas, and legumes in the second year; then in the third year the field lay fallow and livestock could be grazed on it, which fertilized the soil for wheat again. Tenants worked for a fixed number of days on the strips which the lord farmed for himself.
The original manorial system had changed radically before the end of the Middle Ages. The population crash following the Black Death [British Isles: approx 1348-1350] gave rise to social and economic change and lifted many of the former constraints on mobility imposed by the old feudal system. About 50% of the population died, leaving much land uncultivated. Manorial lords wanted all the land to be productive and so welcomed incomers as tenants. Inevitably some tenants prospered and were able to buy more land from those who didn’t. By the seventeenth century, many copyholders were non-resident, some were even gentry. Holdings were consolidated, and some were enclosed: these are referred to as ‘closes’ in the court book.
Ashwellthorpe cum (with) Wreningham
The earliest surviving court book for the manor of Ashwellthorpe cum Wreningham begins in 1660, the year of the restoration of Charles II. At that date, the lord of the manor was Sir John Knyvett (d.1673) of Ashwellthorpe. His family had acquired the manor through the marriage of his ancestor Edmund (d.1539), second son of Sir Thomas Knyvett of Buckenham, and Jane Bourchier of Ashwellthorpe, daughter and heiress of Sir John Bourchier, 2nd baron Berners.
Manorial Court Books
This first court book is in Latin and is endlessly repetitious, so the text [see links below] is a summary of the proceedings at each court rather than a translation. The manor court was held at least once a year. The court had a panel of jurors, made up of some of the most substantial tenants and some of the oldest, who could swear to the identity of the rightful heir to any holding if this was in doubt. Separate juries were sworn for Ashwellthorpe and Wreningham. The jurors appointed constables who were responsible for minor matters of law and order and presented offenders to the court. The offences were usually trivial and involved anti-social behaviour such as not keeping ditches clear and so flooding a neighbour’s land, or not repairing fences enabling cattle to get out and cause damage.
These were recorded first, with a statement of the fines levied, and then followed details of sales or transfers of land. Each court record in this volume is in two parts, the first deals with Ashwellthorpe, and the second covers Wreningham. Only the Wreningham part has been summarised here. The names of parties involved in land transactions in Ashwellthorpe are listed in the summary, but without details of properties which also include land in Fundenhall or Tacolneston.
Land in a manor normally passed from father to son, or to daughters if there were no sons. It could also be sold, with the agreement of the lord of the manor. Some of the transactions state that the steward had spoken privately with a married woman copyholder to make sure that a sale was being made with her consent. Each time a property changed hands, a court was held at which it was surrendered into the hands of the lord and the new tenant was then admitted and he swore homage. The surrender and admission were recorded in the court roll and copies of these entries were given to the new tenant – hence copyhold. Rents were usually low but a fine or fee was paid by the incoming copyholder.
The property is described in detail with the acreage of each piece and its location with reference to the holdings which abutted it. The names of the occupiers of these adjacent properties are given, together with the names of their predecessors and sometimes the dates of their admissions. So although this court book starts in 1660 it is often possible to trace the history of a holding by references to courts held from the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Wreningham Content
No maps have been found of Wreningham copyhold land at that date although it has been possible to identify the various commons. Descriptions of some holdings mention identifiable landmarks – like the church of Wreningham All Saints and various present-day roads – and a few local names have survived such as Willy’s Croft and the gravel pit on the west side of the village. The phrase ‘the king’s highway’ denotes a public road which was maintained by the county. In the summary link, the ‘king’s highway’ is the B1113 (also known as ‘The Turnpike’) which runs from the Harford Bridge on the south edge of Norwich, through Bracon Ash, past the Bird in Hand, down to New Buckenham and into Suffolk. ‘Via Ecclesiastica’ can be identified as Church Road but there were also a large number of minor roads, lokes, and laneways such as Church Lane, Farthings Lane, Hulvergate way, Le Meddow way, Milnecroft way, Millpostway, Nethergate Way, Overgateway, Pangreene, Parkway, Procession Way, and Staving Lane. These were needed to give access to the many separate strips of land in the original three fields: most disappeared when the strips were combined or vanished after the enclosure act in 1777. A few can be identified – for example, the footpath running north from the bend in Church Road by Willy’s Croft is Farthings Lane.
So far, no reference has been found to Folgate, now a street. Given that the volume covers fifty-two years, during which time most of the copyhold properties would have changed hands, it seems probable that the land surrounding Folgate was freehold. It is not known how much freehold land there was in the seventeenth century, but it was certainly a large proportion. However, freehold land was much more complicated to sell than copyhold land, because of the surviving fiction that all land was held of the crown. One of the standard ways of selling freehold land in the seventeenth century was for the purchaser to claim in court that it had been his all along, which the seller was obliged to concede as a third party called the ‘vouchee’, who would vouch for his right to the property, always failed to appear in court to give testimony – whereupon the case went by default. This was called a ’recovery’ and established a solid legal title for the purchaser and was still, together with a similar form of collusive action called a ‘final concord’, in use until 1833.
When Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 all changes which had happened during the commonwealth period, when Oliver Cromwell had been lord protector, were reversed. (By an act of 1650, Parliament had ruled that all court proceedings were to be in English rather than Latin.) In 1660, they reverted to Latin. In the seventeenth century, any educated man could read some Latin because all schools taught it, and it was the common language of law, philosophy, and science throughout the Western world. Nevertheless, the less educated, which included most women, were at a disadvantage, as were in fact many men because legal Latin is not the same as the classical Latin taught in schools. Latin was finally replaced by English in the legal system in 1732 – no doubt to the relief of everybody apart from the lawyers.
Links to Court Book ‘A’ Summaries
Court Book ‘B’
[This book is missing]
Links to Court Book ‘C’
Summaries
[Work in progress …..]