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Agricultural Investment and the Management of the Royal Demesne Manors, 1236–1240

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Robert C. Stacey
Robert C. Stacey
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Yale University, Box 1504A Yale Station, New Haven, CN 06520.
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Abstract

Between 1236 and 1240 the king's estate steward Walter de Burgo improved the productivity of about forty royal manors by systematically increasing agricultural investment to levels four to five times the medieval average. On estates where he managed the inland directly, de Burgo improved the quality of the draft animals and spent large sums on marling, smother crops, and on the purchase of foreign seed. Within four years he raised the net value of these manors 70 percent, thus demonstrating the direct link which could exist between investment levels and productivity in medieval agriculture.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 46 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 919 - 934
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1986

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References

1 I use “demesne” here in its general sense only, to refer to manors held directly by the king or his appointed agents, and which had not been granted out to anyone else on any kind of heritable basis. “Demesne” can also have a second meaning; it can refer to the land on an individual manor which the manorial lord cultivated himself, as distinguished from the rest of the manorial land which he leased out to tenants at rent. To avoid confusion, I shall not use “demesne” in this second sense, although the records sometimes do: see fn. 18. Instead, I shall call such directly cultivated land “the manorial inland” (see fn. 4).Google Scholar

2 Calendar of Patent Rolls [hereafter CPR] 1232–47, pp. 145, 156. An escheator managed property which came into the king's hands when a feudal lord died without heirs.Google Scholar

3 CPR 1232–47, p. 146.Google Scholar

4 On most manors, only a portion of the land was held directly by the lord; the rest was divided up into heritable parcels which owed some combination of rent and labor services to the lord but which were not, strictly speaking, under the lord's direct agricultural control. The portion directly controlled by the lord I shall call the manorial inland. The inland could be exploited in two basic ways. The lord could divide it into parcels also and lease them to manorial tenants or others; or the lord could manage it directly as an agricultural resource, utilizing whatever customary or hired labor was available, along with his own plows, seed, and livestock. This second approach I shall call “direct management of the manorial inland” or some less cumbersome combination of these words. Marling is the addition of crushed limestone to the soil.Google Scholar

5 Book of Fees, I, p. 625. This is a partial gathering of Engaine's debts to the king and probably represents a stage in the process whereby an accountant's scattered debts on the pipe roll were gathered into a single sum and a term set for their combined repayment.Google Scholar

6 Crepping responded every two years, on the foreign accounts rotulet attached to the pipe roll, for the manors in his possession: cf. Pipe Roll 22 Henry III (E.372/82 rot. 4); Pipe Roll 24 Henry III (E.372/84 rot. 2d);Google ScholarPipe Roll 26 Henry III, ed. Cannon, H. L. (New Haven, 1918), pp. 116–20; Pipe Roll 28 Henry III (E.372/88 rot. 12); Pipe Roll 30 Henry III (E.372/90 rot. 9d); Pipe Roll 31 Henry III (E.372/91 rots. 14, 14d).Google Scholar

7 For a discussion of Crepping's management of these estates, see Stacey, Robert C., “Crown Finance and English Government under Henry III, 1236–1245” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1983), pp. 146–51.Google Scholar

8 There are occasional references to this roll on the memoranda rolls: cf. Memoranda Roll 26 Henry III (E.159/20 rot. 12).Google Scholar

9 Pipe Roll 22 Henry III (E.372/82 rots. 1–3d). The rotulets are disordered on both the pipe roll and the chancellor's roll (E.352/31). The rotulet which is presently rot. I should in fact be rot. 3 because it contains the final summing-up of de Burgo's account. It is also labeled rot. 3 in a contemporary hand. Since both the pipe and the chancellor's rolls are sewn in the same disordered sequence, however, the arrangement is probably a thirteenth-century error, and I have therefore not corrected it. Rotulet references reflect the existing order of the account.Google Scholar

10 Occasionally the enrolled accounts make reference to these rotuli de particulis: cf. the account for Bray on rot. 2.Google Scholar

11 I have borrowed the term “chamberlain-level accounts” from Booth, P. H. W., The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester (Manchester, Chetham Society, 1981), pp. 28–34.Google Scholar The best general treatment of medieval accounting techniques is Harvey's, P. D. A. introduction to Manorial Records of Cuxham, Oxfordshire circa 1200–1359 (1976), pp. 12–57; but as Booth has noted, the records Harvey prints here were almost all compiled by manorial bailiffs. Harvey therefore says relatively little about the peculiarities of chamberlain-level accounting, since very few chamberlains' accounts appear in his volume. See Booth, p. 33; and Harvey, p. 34 and fn.106.Google Scholar

12 For a description of Westminster vs. Winchester accounting forms, see Oschinsky, Dorothea, ed., Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford, 1971), pp. 215–19; Booth, Financial Administration, pp. 16–35.Google Scholar

13 Cf. Booth, Financial Administration, p. 32.Google Scholar

14 Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all information is derived from de Burgo's manorial accounts on Pipe Roll 22 Henry III (E.372/82 rots. 1–3d).Google Scholar

15 CPR 1232–47, p. 147.Google Scholar

16 Essendon and Bayford, Writtle, Dymock, Somerton, Finedon, Brigstock, Marden, and Melksham were all divided in this way.Google Scholar

17 See Close Rolls [hereafter Cl.R.] 1237–42, p. 142, for evidence of champerty at Feckenham, Worcester.Google Scholar

18 Cf. CPR 1232–47, pp. 142, 146, 147, 156, all of which refer to the king's “manors and demesnes,” both of which were to be taken in hand and managed for the king's profit. The term “demesnes” is, admittedly, ambiguous; for discussion, see fn. 1.Google Scholar

19 Grange accounts appear a year after the manorial accounts, because the grain harvested at the end of year 22 (1237/38) must be accounted for on the grange account for that year. It was not until the end of the following year, however, that all the grain harvested in the fall of 1238 had been disbursed in sales, wages, or for seed. Therefore, it was not until the bailiff accounted for the other manorial issues for year 23 (1238/39) that he could present a complete grange account for year 22.Google Scholar

20 Although de Burgo seems not to have had much success increasing inland acreage by reclaiming alienated lands, he may have done rather better in reclaiming assails which he then leased back to the manorial tenants at a yearly rent. For examples of this, see Cl.R. 1234–7, p. 398; Cl.R. 1237–42, p. 142.Google Scholar

21 Oschinsky, Walter of Henley, pp. 318–19.Google Scholar

22 Cl.R. 1237–42, pp. 39, 142. De Burgo's attempts to enforce labor services may have been more general than these two instances would suggest. Services were frequently linked to tenures, and it is therefore not always possible to determine from a particular legal case whether de Burgo was claiming labor services alone, or whether he was claiming also the lands for which these services were allegedly owed. For examples, see Cl.R. 1234–7, pp. 398, 433; Cl.R. 1237–42, p. 142; Curia Regis Rolls [hereafter CRR] XVI, #1428. For references to the particularly interesting quo warranto case by which de Burgo attempted to recover lands and services at Neatham in Hampshire, see CRR XV, #2059, 2075; CRR XVI, #43, 84, 117D, 125, 149A; Cl.R. 1234–7, pp. 433, 482, 459; and Cl.R. 1237–42, pp. 82, 90.Google Scholar

23 Pipe Roll 14 Henry III, p. 162.Google Scholar

24 For Corsham, see de Burgo's enrolled account on Pipe Roll 22 Henry III (E.372/82 rot. 2d.); for Feckenham cf. Cl.R. 1237–42, p. 142.Google Scholar

25 Postan, M. M., “The Chronology of Labour Services,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fourth Series, 20 (1937), pp. 169–93, revised and reprinted in his collectedCrossRefGoogle ScholarEssays on Medieval Agriculture and General Problems of the Medieval Economy (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 89–106;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMiller, Edward and Hatcher, John, Medieval England: Rural Society and Economic Change, 1086–1348 (New York, 1978), pp. 124–27, 219–24.Google Scholar

26 See fn. 22.Google Scholar

27 CPR 1232–47, pp. 156, 173, 175. For the political background to this order and its subsequent revocation, see Stacey, “Crown Finance,” pp. 140–44, 216–22.Google Scholar

28 For an example of the kind of alienation with which the council hoped to deal, see the case of Jordan, Alvred of Bromsgrove in CPR 1232–47, p. 172.Google Scholar

29 Postan, M. M., “Investment in Medieval Agriculture,” this JOURNAL, 27 (12 1967), pp. 576–47;Google ScholarMate, M., “Profit and Productivity on the Estates of Isabella de Forz(1260–1292),” Economic History Review, second series, 33 (08 1980), pp. 326–34;CrossRefGoogle Scholar but compare Campbell, B. M. S., “Agricultural Progress in Medieval England: Some Evidence from Eastern Norfolk,” Economic History Review, second series, 36 (02 1983), pp. 26–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 The figures on which these calculations are based are presented in tabular form for each manor in Stacey, “Crown Finance,” appendix II.Google Scholar

31 The importance of soil conditioning in medieval agriculture has been stressed by Long, W. Harwood, “The Low Yields of Corn in Medieval England,” Economic History Review, second series, 32 (11 1979), pp. 459–69. Long's suggestions receive important corroboration from Campbell, “Agricultural Progress,” passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Titow, J. Z., Winchester Yields: A Study in Medieval Agricultural Productivity (Cambridge, 1972), p. 136. Doubts as to the utility of this ratio as a predictor of soil productivity have been expressed byGoogle ScholarCampbell, “Agricultural Progress,” pp. 29–31Google Scholar, and in “Arable Productivity in Medieval England: Some Evidence from Norfolk,” this JOURNAL, 43 (06 1983), pp. 379–404.Google Scholar

33 I hope to discuss de Burgo's stock management techniques elsewhere.Google Scholar

34 The earliest previously known reference to vetches in England dates from 1268, also in Kent: cf. Campbell, “Agricultural Progress,” p. 42, fn. 60,Google Scholar citing O'Grady, M. M., “A Study of Some of the Characteristics of the Holdings and Agriculture of Eastry Manor, East Kent from c. 1086–c. 1350” (M.Phil. thesis, Univ. of London, 1981). It would appear that vetches may have been grown in Kent for many years before being introduced into the other English counties in the early fourteenth century.Google Scholar

35 This fact was apparently known to the author of the Seneschaucy (cf. c. 24), and was certainly known to Walter of Henley (cf. c. 62): Oschinsky, Walter of Henley, pp. 270–71, 324–25. See also Miller and Hatcher, Medieval England, p. 214.Google Scholar

36 Oschinsky, Walter of Henley, pp. 174–75.Google Scholar

37 C1.R. 1237–42, p. 105: 25 Sep. 1238.Google Scholar

38 For data on individual manors, see Stacey, “Crown Finance,” appendix III. Both a minimum and a maximum percentage are offered because in some cases grain purchases are not explicitly recorded on the accounts as being for seed. One therefore does not know whether the purchased grain was kept out for seed, or whether it was mixed in with the old grain and disbursed indifferently in payments to laborers and in sales. On most manors, however, it is unlikely that the same grain would be bought and sold again during the same year. Even where the purchased grain is not explicitly labeled “ad semene” (for sowing) in the records, it is therefore likely that it was intended as seed and that the maximum percentage figure, not the minimum, reflects the true amount of purchased seed sown on the manors.Google Scholar

39 This figure includes only manors de Burgo held for two years. The calculation omits seven manors he acquired in 1237.Google Scholar

40 Stacey, “Crown Finance,” pp. 72–74, 195–200, 226–28.Google Scholar

41 Hoyt, Royal Demesne, p. 160.Google Scholar

42 This calculation is based on the data assembled in Stacey, “Crown Finance,” chap. 6.Google Scholar

43 Although de Burgo promised to pay the king 400 marks in 1242 to be quit of all trespasses and complaints concerning his tenure as the king's manorial custodian (CLR 1240–5, p. 133), the surviving records contain very few complaints against his conduct while in office, despite the thorough inquisition which toured these estates soliciting complaints against him during the summer of 1240. See Stacey, “Crown Finance,” pp. 178–79. Moreover, de Burgo's 400-mark payment may also have included the £270 he still owed on his final account, in which case he paid nothing for protection from grievances which might be raised against him.Google Scholar

44 This debt was not transferred from the foreign accounts roll to the regular pipe roll accounts until 1261: cf. Pipe Roll 45 Henry III (E.372/105 rot. II). It was never combined with the debt he owed from his second accounting, in 1240.Google Scholar

45 This sum has been computed from the memoranda roll for 25 Henry III, which is the only record to reflect de Burgo's efforts to clear his account: cf. E.368/13 rot. 12, dated 25 July 1241. This debt was never transferred to the pipe rolls; it may have been included as part of the 400-mark payment de Burgo promised the king in 1242, on which see fn. 43.Google Scholar

46 The custodial experiment continued on a few manors in the north under Crepping's guidance until at least 1248: cf. Pipe Roll 31 Henry III (E.372/91 rots. 14, 14d).Google Scholar

47 For further discussion of the political context behind the formation of this new council, see Stacey, Robert C., Politics, Policy, and Finance under Henry III, 1216–1245 (forthcoming).Google Scholar