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‘Shades Still on the Window’: A Reply to Zvi Razi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

L.R. Poos  and
R.M. Smith
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Extract

English manorial-court documentation, in many respects unique among European countries for its information pertaining to the bulk of rural dwellers in the middle ages, has long provided the most voluminous evidence for studying many aspects of medieval society. We have no doubt that it will continue to do so; yet, as the metaphorical title of our original essay was intended to convey, the ‘window’ through which we may view this society has finite dimensions. It was our intention to suggest some ways in which these dimensions can be more clearly understood. At its most basic level, then, our concern was with one of the most fundamental questions of legal as well as social history: the relationship between the scope of a legal arena's purview and the society in which that arena operated. Our focus was, however, squarely upon Zvi Razi's attempts at demographic inference from the Halesowen court material because he has made the boldest claims to date for the ability of manorial courts’ recorded transactions to reflect the whole of their communities’ populations and activities.

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Reply
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Law and History Review , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , Fall 1985 , pp. 409 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 1985

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References

1. Poos, L.R. and Smith, R.M., ‘“Legal Windows onto Historical Populations?” Recent Research on Demography and the Manor Court in Medieval England’, 2 Law and History Review 128–52, (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Razi, Z., ‘The Use of Manorial-Court Rolls in Demographic Analysis: A Reconsideration’, 3 Law and History Review 191–200 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. In fact, Halesowen possesses a fragmentary polltax return, not cited by Razi, which unfortunately appears not to be susceptible of conclusive analysis: PRO. E179. 166. 24.

4. Poos and Smith, ‘Legal Windows’, supra note 1 at 134–36.

5. Z. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 192–93.

6. It will be noted that the total number of tenants tabulated here is slightly smaller than in our original tabulation (Poos and Smith, ‘Legal Windows’, supra note 1 at 135). This is because the rentals record a small number of joint tenancies (husband and wife, parent and child, or siblings). In our original tabulation these were included, and court appearances of all the joint tenants of each tenement were averaged to provide a single figure for that tenement. Because for present purposes we want to isolate the differences between male and female tenants’ appearance patterns, only males and females holding land alone are tabulated. The table given here also aggregates all tenements into three size categories.

7. Poos, L.R., ‘Population and Resources in Two Fourteenth-Century Essex Communities: Great Waltham and High Easter, 1327–1389’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1984), 214–16Google Scholar.

8. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 192. Razi presumes, quite arbitrarily, that ‘It is reasonable to assume’ women constituted about sixteen percent of all tenants (a figure apparently culled from J.Z. Titow's calculations from rentals of several ecclesiastical estates in southern England: Titow, J.Z., English Rural Society 1200–1350 (London, 1969), 87)Google Scholar, and asserts that ‘the majority of these women probably did not appear in the court rolls’.

9. Razi, Z., Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen 1270–1400 (Cambridge, 1980), 24–26Google Scholar.

10. These figures therefore do not show what proportion of 1328 tenants appeared in any particular quinquennium, but rather are intended to convey how much time must elapse before a given proportion of tenants have been observed at all in the court records.

11. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 196.

12. E.g. Razi, Z., ‘Family, Land and the Village Community in Later Medieval England’, Past and Present 93 (1981), 31CrossRefGoogle Scholar: Before the Black Death, Razi estimates, at least forty-three percent of the ‘families’ identified in the court records had at least one servant ‘for some time’. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, supra note 9 at 78-80: subtenants of ‘rich’ tenants are noted but their relative proportions are impossible to assess from Razi's published work.

13. Cf. Britton, E., The Community of the Vill: A Study in the History of the Family and Village Life in Fourteenth-Century England (Toronto, 1977), 92, 135–7Google Scholar; Hilton, R.H., The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), 30–31Google Scholar.

14. That is, if one took Razi's estimate of the dimensions of servanthood as applicable to Waltham and Easter (infra note 12) and if most of these servants never appeared in court, this would result in a degree of residents' omission from the court records several times greater than the arbitrary figure he ascribes to the ‘loss’ of tenants resulting from the absence of pre-1327 court records.

15. Poos and Smith, ‘Legal Windows’, supra note 1 at 136–37.

16. Poos, ‘Population and Resources’, supra note 7 at 139–43.

17. Ibid., 149–150; Hilton, English Peasantry, supra note 13 at 30–33; Hilton, R.H., ‘Some Social and Economic Evidence in Late Medieval English Tax Returns’, in Herbst, S., ed., Spoleczenstwo gospodarka kultura: Studia ofiarowane Marianowi Malowistowi (Warsaw, 1974), 120–21Google Scholar.

18. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 194.

19. Poos and Smith, ‘Legal Windows’, supra note 1 at 131–32.

20. Smith, R.M., ‘Some Thoughts on “Hereditary” and “Proprietary” Rights in Land under Customary Law in Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Century England’, 1 Law and History Review 105 n. 46 (1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Razi, ‘Manorial Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 194.

22. Ibid. 194–95.

23. Amphlett, J., Hamilton, S.G. and Wilson, R.A., eds., 2 vols., Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales 1270–1307, (Worcestershire Historical Society, 1910–1933)Google Scholar.

24. For instance, at the court of 13.2.1270 presentments were made by the aletasters of those breaking the assize of ale; the court of 17.2.1270 also contains presentments by the aletasters; the court of 30.4.1270 contained presentments from jurors of the various vills that made up the manor but they concerned the following matters—wrongfully raising ditches and hedges and making encroachments illegally on the king's highway and the presentment of an individual who no longer had rights of residence on the manor. Amphlett, et al., Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales supra note 23, i, 4–17. A very similar list of matters is handled in the once-yearly leet court at Redgrave in 1260 concerning infractions of the Ale Assize, petty thefts, diversion of water and destruction of property boundaries; Court of 3.5.1260 (University of Chicago Library, Bacon MS 1).

25. Item dicunt jurati quod Willelmus de Tenhal verberavit Robertum Scout inde consider atum est quod distringatur ad veniendum ad proximam curiam. Item dicunt jurati quod Agnes le Teyng est maritata sine licentia domini unde consideratum est quod distringatur. Amphlett, et al., Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales, supra note 23, iii, 36.

26. At the Halesowen Great Court of 26.4.1307 we find for instance the following presentments: Oldebure (Oldbury) presents that Willelmus Bonde (jd), Johannes Bonde, Thomas Symond (eger), Margeria Textrix (egra), Johannes le Webbe (vacat), Willelmus atte Mulne (vacat) faciunt defaltas. Ideo in misericordia. This is the first court session in the published Halesowen court rolls at which default of court was the object of jury presentment, Amphlett et al., Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales supra note 23, ii, 563. For examples of presentment of individuals trespassing on or damaging seigneurial property: Oldebure (Oldbury) presentat quod liberi Walteri de Oldebure ceperunt de busce domini ad molendinum de Oldebure. Court of 17.5.1307, ibid., 566. At the court of 4.10.1307 the jurors dicunt quod Alicia le Kyng cepit garbas de domini.… Item Thomas Bonde cepit garbas de tasso domini ad voluntatem suam. Ibid. 578.

27. Razi, ‘Manorial Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 194.

28. Ibid. It would, however, be to distort the character of curial procedures involving the transfer of holdings to rightful heirs if we were to assume that arrangements for establishing their claims and indeed their actual existence were highly variable and arbitrary. The usual form of obituary entry in the Rickinghall court proceedings took this sequence; the tenant's death was announced, the heir or heirs claimed the inheritance and his, her or their claims were investigated and verified by an inquisition jury. For example, Petrus Bannelone qui tenuit de domino j messagium et sex acras terre et medietatem unius messuagii obiit post ultimam curiam. Et super hoc veniunt Ricardus et Henricus fratres predicti Petri et petunt ad predicta tenementa tamquam heredes propinquiores admitti. Et quia per inquisitionem factam compertum est quod predicti Ricardus et Henricus propinquiores heredes admittuntur etc. Et dam domino de fine pro herieto (3s.4d.) Plegii Radulfus Celastr’ et Walterus Payn. Rickinghall court 3.7.1307 (British Library Add. 63419). Efforts also seem to have been made to note those rightful heirs who failed to appear in court. See, for example, a case when only one of two brothers came to take the land of their deceased father: Rogerus Lully villanus domini obiit post ultimam curiam qui tenuit de domino die quo obiit unum messuagium et tres acras et tres rodas de villenagio domini. Et venit Ricardus filius suus et unus he res et petit admitti ad medietatem tenementi. Et predictus Ricardus dat domino pro medietate heryetti. Plegii Radulphus Silvestr’ et Johannes Dulet. Et preceptum est seysire medietatem tenementi in manu domini quousque Rogerus Lully veniet. Rickinghall court 5.4.1315 (British Library Add. 63426). Furthermore care was taken through custodianship agreements to preserve the inheritances of under-age heirs. Typical of such arrangements was that involving William the under-age son of Thomas Bercer whose heriot for 3 acres and 3 rods of Osbert Fitte's tenement was paid but dictus Willelmus minor etate est ideo traditur matri sue ad custodiendum etc plegii Rogerus Lune et Thomas Brunning. Rickinghall court 6.6.1300 (British Library Add. 63412). However, at the court of the previous September (23.9.1299), Thomas Bercer's death had unearthed a number of earlier actions that had eluded the court's notice. For instance, Osbert Fitte had died some years earlier and post cuius mortem Agnes et Beatrix filie eiusdem intraverunt eo quod alius heres non se optulit pro herede… tenuerunt per xij annos elapsos de quibus vendiderunt Thoma dicto capellano de Fynyngham (i.e. Thomas Bercer) iij acras iij rodas de quibus in curia j acram et dimidiam et residuum extra curiam et inde obiit seysitus. Thomas’ death is announced at this court as was the fact that he had a son William etatis ij anni qui nondum fecit herietum pro eodem tenemento etc. Ideo terra capiatur etc. It is noteworthy that at this point John, the son and heir of Osbert Fitte, appeared ready to retrieve what remained of his ‘inheritance’ (4 acres and 1 rod) which his sisters had not sold. To enter it he paid a fine of 4s. For a fuller discussion of custody arrangements in customary courts see Clark, E., ‘The Custody of Children in English Manor Courts’, 3 Law and History Review 333–48 (1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Further evidence of a concern to ensure adherence to correct procedures is shown in an interesting case concerning the inheritance rights of an unborn child. John Chapman's death was announced at the Rickinghall court of 14.11.1310. He died holding a messuage and 26 acres of customary land and quia uxor dicti Johannis pregnans est ut dicitur. Ideo dicta terra capiatur et retineatur in manu domini quousque sciantur utrum. We can only assume that the child died at or very close to birth as at the next court (16.12.1310) John Chapman's nephews paid the heriot to take their uncle's land (British Library Add. 63423). For further comments on curial procedures involving the identification and inheritances of heirs see for example C. Dyer, ‘Changes in the Link Between Families and Land in the West Midlands in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’ in Smith, R.M., ed., Land Kinship and Life-cycle (Cambridge, 1984), 306–7Google Scholar; and Beckerman, J.S., ‘Customary Law in English Manorial-Courts in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’ (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1972), 164–171Google Scholar.

29. For an example of such doubts as to the reliability of court proceedings in inheritance cases see Searle, E., ‘Seigneurial Control of Women's Marriage: The Antecedents and Function of Merchet in England’, Past and Present 82 (1979), 35CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See however, the comments of Smith, ‘Some Thoughts’ supra note 20, at 112–114; and Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 194.

30. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, supra note 9 at 9.

31. This was a practice that was found on the manors of the Abbots of Bury and has also been encountered elsewhere. Titow, English Rural Society, supra note 8 at 75–6; Harvey, Barbara, Westminster Abbey and its Estates in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1977), 223–25Google Scholar; King, Edmund, Peterborough Abbey 1086–1310 (Cambridge, 1973), 182–188Google Scholar; Dyer, C., Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society; The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), 156Google Scholar. For comments on the two-tier system of Halesowen entry fines by which heirs paid much less than unrelated persons on taking up a new holding see Dyer, ‘Changes in the link’, supra note 28 at p. 225. In Rickinghall entry fines by persons who took on holdings that escheated to the manorial lord for want of heirs were far higher than the cash heriots paid by blood relatives. For instance, the small-holder Gilbert Godchold died in 1316 and no heir came to claim the land he held. Indeed a marginal note laconically stating him to be a ‘pauper’ alongside this obituary entry is a very poignant indication of the fact that this year was one of great suffering in the manor on account of the deficient harvest. In a court session four weeks later the lord granted his solitary rod of land to Walter Bron who paid an entry fine of 3s. (equivalent to an entry fine of 12s. per acre and two to three times the average level of cash heriots that kin would have paid). Affines such as sons-in-law and nephews of the wife were, in Rickinghall, charged entry fines along with heriot to secure their inheritance rights. For instance, in addition to a horse as best beast the husbands of Richard Gilbert's three daughters each paid 3s.4d. ut possunt admitti ad dictam hereditatem similiter cum uxoribus suis eo quod extranei. Rickinghall Court 20.0.1311, (British Library Add. 63423). Adam Othyn, the nephew of Alice the widow of William le Sawyere paid an entry fine of £5 as well as an ox as heriot worth 15s. to secure his aunt's forty-two acre holding in Rickinghall in July 1310. (British Library Add. 63423).

32. A similar level and pattern of changes in license fees for inter-vivos land ‘ansfers during these years is to be found in the adjacent manor Redgrave. See Smith, ‘Some Thoughts’, supra note 20 at 117.

33. See the argument of Hatcher, John, ‘English Serfdom and Villeinage: Towards a Reassessment’, Past and Present 90 (1981), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. For instance, at the Rickinghall court of 29.12.1300, the Abbot sold customary land to his tenants that had escheated to him at the following prices: half an acre for 15s., 1–1/2 rods for 13s.4d. and 1/2 rod for 3s. (British Library Add. 63413). In a debt case in the court of 27.9.1308 Adzurus del Hok complained that Reginald le Newman had purchased 3 rods from him and owed him 33s.4d. which he had agreed to pay him in two terms. (British Library Add. 63420). For similar estimates of the value of customary land to customary tenants in Redgrave see Smith, ‘Some Thoughts’, supra note 20 at 118. For intertenant payments concerning customary land, admittedly from the later rather than the early fourteenth century, see C. Dyer, ‘The Social and Economic Background to the Rural Revolt of 1381’, in Hilton, R.H. and Aston, T.H., eds., The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge, 1984), 22Google Scholar.

35. There is only one known case of an inheritance not being taken up by sons on the neighbouring manor of Redgrave and this occurs in the immediate aftermath of the period of severe dearth extending from 1315 to 1317 when only Gilbert the eldest of the seven sons of John Lord entered into the sibling group's rightful inheritance of 1–1/2 acres of customary land. This however, may have involved a previous intra-familial agreement that has left no entry in the records. Land transactions between siblings after their joint-inheritance were very common on this manor: see R.M. Smith, ‘Families and Their Land in an Area of Partible Inheritance: Redgrave, Suffolk 1260–1320’ in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, Kinship, supra note 28 at 145.

36. Most of these cases were concentrated in the years of severe economic difficulties associated with the harvest failures between 1315 and 1317 and were certainly not characteristic of the greater part of the period extending from 1295 to 1319. Some indication of the effects of this enhanced mortality between 1315 and 1317, which may have been a factor at least temporarily contributing to heirship failure, especially among close kin, can be seen from the following case concerning (perhaps characteristically) a Rickinghall smallholder; the death of Richard le Barker, who held a cottage and one rod of land, was announced at the court of August 1316 and his son and heir Adam was admitted to the land with no heriot taken, since a marginal note of ‘pauper’ is suggestive of the family's predicament. In the next court on the 30th September, we find the sad announcement of Adam's death when his two nephews Simon and John le Breton inherited the miniscule property by paying a cash heriot of 2s.

37. See, for instance, the cases in Smith ‘Some Thoughts’, supra note 20, at 113–14, and Smith, ‘Families and Their Land’, supra note 35 at 190–93.

38. Smith, ‘Families and their Land’, supra note 35 at 184–85.

39. Poos and Smith, ‘Legal Windows’, supra note 1 at 144.

40. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, supra note 9 at 55.

41. This recension of our earlier assumptions concerning the age patterns of sons at and after their first court appearance applies equally to R.M. Smith, ‘Some Issues Concerning Families and Their Property in Rural England 1250-1800’ in R.M. Smith, ed., Land, Kinship, supra note 28 at 48, although we believe that the original conclusions still stand.

42. Smith, ibid, at 43-55, extending Wrigley, E.A., ‘Fertility Strategy for the Individual and the Group’, in Tilly, C., ed., Historical Studies of Changing Fertility (Princeton, N.J., 1978) 235–54Google Scholar.

43. For some comments on the great difficulties confronting historical studies of the family that attempt to infer emotional attitudes or ideals from structures or actions see Smith, ‘Families and Their Property’, supra note 41 at 58–59.

44. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 196, 198–99.

45. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, supra note 9 at 61–63.

46. Ibid, at 62.

47. Amphlett et al. Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales, supra note 23, i, 367.

48. Further work on the social characteristics of marriage fine payers among the tenants of the extensive estates of the Bishops Winchester in Somerset, Hampshire, Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire by Mr. J.P.D. Williams of Trinity College, Cambridge, confirms the patterns that we have described in our earlier article.

49. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 199.

50. Information on individual ages in manorial-court proceedings, especially where custodianship arrangements were being registered, was not particularly rare although most such cases do seem to have been found in years of severe demographic disturbance when parents were the victims of ‘premature’ deaths. Sometimes distinctive features of the local inheritance custom made such entries more frequent such as on the Abbot of St. Albans manor of Winslow in Buckinghamshire where ultimogeniture regularly produced situations in which the rightful heir was under age on the death of the father. See Cambridge University Library Ms. D.D.7.22, Winslow Court Book. See also Clark, ‘The Custody of Children’, supra note 28, where almost forty per cent of the 459 custodies in that study come from the years 1348–50 when plague was rampant in the population.

51. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, supra note 9 at 61, and ‘Manor-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 199.

52. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 199.

53. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, supra note 9 at 10.

54. Razi, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 197.

55. Poos and Smith, ‘Legal Windows’, supra note 1 at 139–51.

56. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death, supra note 9 at 43–5.

57. Razi, ‘Manorial Court Rolls’, supra note 2 at 199.

58. Poos and Smith, ‘Manorial-Court Rolls’, supra note 1 at 141.

59. Smith, D. Scott, ‘Estimates of Early American Demographers: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back, What Steps in the Future?’ Historical Methods 12 (1979), 34Google ScholarPubMed.