This is a valuable study of manorial governance between 1300 and 1650. Gibbs demonstrates that manorial governance thrived for the duration of this period and coexisted well with other forms of local governance. The main evidence base is provided by manorial court rolls recording the proceedings of courts baron and courts leet. He takes five manors in particular as case studies: Horstead in Norfolk, Cratfield in Suffolk, Little Downham in Cambridgeshire, Worfield in Shropshire, and Fordington in Dorset.
Newcomers to the subject of medieval and early modern local governance quickly find themselves bewildered by the multifarious administrative, geographical, and tenurial divisions that existed, including vills, parishes, and manors. Some vills were made up of several manors, while some manors contained several vills. Gibbs does a fine job of illustrating the complicated relationships between these various units. For example, the vill of Horstead-with-Stanninghall was composed of two principal manors (Horstead and Stanninghall) and possibly also a separate fee (Cattes manor). Horstead and Stanninghall each formed part of separate lordships. Horstead was an ecclesiastical parish in its own right, while the civil parish was composed of both Horstead and Stanninghall (22). He could perhaps have gone further in explaining the differences in form and function between manors, vills, and parishes. He says that the vill was the “geographical unit, as distinct from the manor, by which England was divided for the purposes of royal administration” (15). This is potentially misleading, as the manor was both a geographical and an administrative unit, while the vill continued to be used for administrative purposes on into the sixteenth century, such as the assessment of royal taxation. The Pipe Rolls of the Exchequer make mention of manors, parishes, and vills. It would have been useful to sort all this out, offering a brief description of the various administrative purposes of each type of division.
Gibbs shows that manorial officeholding was non-exclusive in England after the Black Death, with one in five men serving at least once in any given five-year period, although there was also a “core group” in most manors who dominated the major offices (95 and 96). He demonstrates that manorial offices were not occupied only by unfree tenants, although customary tenants did disproportionately serve in such offices (126). In chapters five and six, he confirms that the same men often served in both manorial and parochial office. The same names crop up as reeves, jurors leet, constables, churchwardens, and beadles. This is as expected, given that there would have been a limited number of men in each locality with the willingness and requisite administrative competence to take on such jobs. Gibbs also shows that the manor and the parish effectively collaborated to govern effectively. The machinery of parish administration was good for collecting money, while the machinery of manorial administration was good for enforcing compliance, so the two systems became mutually dependent (196, 199).
The theoretical content of Gibbs's book, such as the notion of state formation, sits uneasily with his details-driven approach. He does not seem entirely convinced by these ideas, but though he chips away at their edges, arguing for instance that “state formation through the parish does not seem to have dramatically changed village socio-political structures” (179), he still pays homage to them. Some might wish he had rejected these obstructive and frankly unhelpful concepts. The quantitative analysis—the tables, line graphs, averages, and quartiles—can be difficult for the numerically challenged to follow. The results are also of doubtful explanatory utility in some cases, given the idiosyncratic and non-statistical nature of the source material.
The book assumes rather a lot of prior knowledge. For instance, there is much discussion of reeves but no explanation of exactly what a reeve was or did. It will therefore be most useful to advanced scholars. Some of the technical vocabulary could have been glossed, such as “pinders” on page 74 (officers responsible for impounding strays); “tranters” on page 150 (which could refer to carriers, hawkers, or regraters); and “terrier” on page 155 (a register of real property). The discussions of the famous Swallowfield articles of 1596, which Gibbs uses to frame the book, might have to be modified in light of recent research into this subject by Ralph Houlbrooke. Houlbrooke has suggested that, contrary to claims made by other historians, the Swallowfield articles were not actually produced at a parish meeting. Admittedly, it would have been difficult for Gibbs to take Houlbrooke's research into account, since at the time of writing it has only been presented in the form of conference and seminar papers. Overall, Gibbs's book is a fascinating guide to manorial governance in the Middle Ages and early modern period, and one which suggests numerous avenues for future research by social and administrative historians.
