Manorial Custumals Reconsidered

Bibliographic Data

ID4162984
AuthorsJean Birrell (University of Birmingham, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume224
Issue1
Pages3-37
Publication date2014-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePast & Present (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0031-2746 • E-ISSN: 1477-464X
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/pastj/gtu007
OpenAlexW2056981583
LanguageEN
Citations received11

In the preamble to a custumal of 1341 for the manor of Alrewas, Staffordshire, we are presented with an ideal manorial lord. Sir Philip de Somerville, we are told, had ‘governed the manor amicably and graciously these last forty years and more’, and has ‘more knowledge than anyone else living of the certainty of the customs of the tenants’. So, when disagreements had arisen on the manor — between the tenants and Sir Philip’s officials, we should note, not between them and Sir Philip himself — it was to him, ‘trusting in his faith as a good lord’, that they appealed. What they asked was that he ‘cause to be set down in writing all the customs and all the services’ they had been ‘accustomed to do and to have’, so that they would ‘be remembered in perpetuity, and for the greatest advantage of the lord and his successors, avoiding danger to the souls of either party’; ‘to which petition’, we are told, ‘the lord Philip agreed’.1

Business · Certainty · Faith · Ideal (ethics) · Perpetuity · Political science · Preamble · Theology · Engineering · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Philosophy

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