9 - Grants for terms of years

Summary

In the early medieval period the granting of land for fixed terms of years can be detected at two levels. At the manorial level, both lords and tenants made such grants, and the admission of tenants, and jurisdiction over all aspects of the tenancies, was a matter for manorial courts, as in the case of the ordinary customary tenancies. Such grants were rarely made by charter, and records of admissions can be found in the rolls of manorial courts from the time when these start to be available in the thirteenth century. It is very uncommon to find such records, or references to them, transcribed into a cartulary. On another level are grants made for various purposes which were unconnected with the routine management of manors. Such grants were known to the Anglo-Saxons, but not many have survived. Examples remain scarce for the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries: in the cartularies and collections examined by me, only sixty have been found for the period ending in 1225. The five earliest charters found were: two grants of land to religious houses for terms of eleven years and twenty years respectively; the yielding up, for a term of seven years, by a freehold tenant to his lord, of the land held from him, in order to pay off a debt; the grant of a straightforward occupancy lease for twenty years, at an economic rent, to a religious house; and the grant by a religious house of two stocked manors to one of its own clerks, to be managed for twelve years.