Bibliography
| Author | Christopher Jessel |
| Pages | 507-515 |
Bibliography
LAW
Legal texts about manors have traditionally been entitled Copyhold and the text refers frequently to the books by Coke, Watkins and Scriven. Others of less authority are by Rouse (1837 and 1866), Shelford (1853), GW Cooke (1853) and Elton (1893). Most such books intended for lawyers are technical and difficult to follow but a clear readable text is by Benaiah Adkin published in 1919 and intended for surveyors with little legal background
A modern work which was indispensable is the comprehensive Halsbury’s Laws of England which runs to over 100 volumes, particularly the titles on Copyhold, Commons, Custom, Ecclesiastical Law and Franchises. Legal dictionaries are also helpful, particularly Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary. Some works on special subjects are referred to in the notes to the relevant chapters
The Law Commission is engaged in reform of the law and bringing it up to date. It operates by publishing summaries of the existing law based on considerable research with proposals for reform. As many of the topics covered in this book have been the subject of the Commission’s attention its conclusions carry weight.
Much of the modern law is affected by land registration and the Land Registry publishes practice guides aimed at professional advisers which give their view on some aspects of the law.
HISTORY
A great many historical texts and articles touch on the manor in some way. A good general guide is Bennett, Life on the English Manor, although this is now somewhat outdated. The legal rules applied by the royal courts are set in historical context in AWB Simpson’s Introduction to the History of the Land Law, although he has little to say on manors as such. Holdsworth’s History of
508 The Law of the Manor
English Law deals only incidentally with manors. That is now being replaced by the multi-author Oxford History of the Laws of England. The leading historian in the early history of manors was FW Maitland, especially Domesday Book and Beyond, and The History of English Law (known as Pollock and Maitland, although Sir Frederick Pollock contributed virtually nothing but his name). Maitland inherited a manor, trained as a barrister and lived when the manorial system was still (just) operating and even when he is writing about the eleventh century his side comments on later developments are illuminating. Some of his conclusions are now dated, but his understanding of the subject is unequalled. A standard source book which extracts several legal documents is Stubbs’ Select Charters and a later work along the same lines, Sources of English Constitutional History by Stephenson and Marcham. There is also a good deal of general discussion in periodicals published by learned societies. Nearly all local history depends on manorial sources; indeed, many are simply histories of particular manors.
WORKS REFERRED TO
Abels, Richard P, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England
(University of California Press, 1988)
Adkin, Benaiah W, Copyhold and other Land Tenures of England (Sweet &
Maxwell, 1919)
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (translation by GN Garmondsway) (JM Dent & Sons
Ltd, 1972)
Aristotle, Metaphysics (c 330 BC)
Aristotle, Physics (c 330 BC)
Austin, J, Lectures on Jurisprudence (Campbell (ed)) (John Murray, 1885)
Bacon, Francis, Works
Beckett, John and Turner, Michael, ‘End of the Old Order? FMLThompson, The
Land Question, and the burden of ownership in England, c1880–c1925’ (2007) 55 Agricultural History Review 269
Bennett, HS, Life on the English Manor 1150–1400 (Alan Sutton, 1987) Beresford, MW, ‘Mapping the Medieval Landscape, forty years in the field’, in
SJR Woodell (ed), The English Landscape, Past, present and future (Oxford University Press, 1985)
Bettey, JH, Manorial Custom and Widows’ Estate, Archives XX No 88
(October 1992)
Bettey, JH, Wessex from AD 1000 (Longman, 1986) Blackstone, Sir William, Commentaries on the Laws of England
(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/blackstone.asp)
Blair, John, Early Medieval Surrey: Landholding, Church and Settlement before
1300 (Surrey Archaeological Society, 1991)
Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society (English translation by LA Manyon) (Routledge
Kegan Paul, 1961)
Bois, Guy, The transformation of the year one thousand (French edn, 1989) (English translation by J Birrell) (Manchester...
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