Your World of Legal Intelligence
 United Kingdom | +44 (0) 20 7284 8080

Introduction

Document Cited authorities 8 Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorChristopher Jessel
Pages15-19

Introduction

This book aims to give an outline of so much of the law relating to manors and to related matters as still exists. That law has ancient roots and has developed over the centuries and now survives in fragments but it can still be important and can support valuable rights of property or give rise to disputes. It is necessary, as so often when describing legal ideas, to distinguish the meaning lawyers give to particular words from the way they are commonly used. In ordinary, as distinct from legal, usage the word ‘manor’ may refer to a large old house, rambling because bits of it have been built in different centuries in different styles, and been altered a good deal over those centuries. Parts of it are falling down, much has been demolished, and what remains is not in good repair, but it has its own homely attraction, and, like the stone of which it is built, it blends into the landscape of which it has formed part for hundreds of years. This book is not about houses, but about a legal idea, something that cannot be seen or touched, but which has been important, and is still significant. Even so, a house is not a bad image to have in mind, for two reasons.

First, the word ‘manor’ comes from the Latin manerium, which itself comes from manere, meaning ‘to remain’.1Manere also led to mansio, which gave ‘mansion’. The word ‘manor’ was introduced into England with the Norman Conquest of 1066. The manor was a house in Normandy. A system of estates called land had been developing among the Anglo-Saxons before the Conquest. The nearest equivalent Saxon word to manerium was heal, which was usually translated into Latin as aula and a mixture of heal and aula has given the modern word ‘hall’. Manor houses are often called halls and the entrance hall to a modern house can be traced back to the great mediaeval halls that were the focal points of manors, where a resident lord would live, and where manorial courts were held. The Normans used manerium as their equivalent of villa, which was the usual word in the Roman Empire for a large country house. So, manor, mansion, hall and villa all originally meant much the same – a great

1 FW Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge University Press, 1987; first published

1897) 108; John Scriven, A Treatise on the Law of Copyholds (Butterworth & Co, 7th edn, 1896, by Archibald Brown) 1; Sir Edward Coke, Complete Copyholder (1630), s 31. Coke’s derivation from ‘mesner’ is not now accepted.

xvi The Law of the Manor

house dominating the local countryside – and then manor came to mean the legal institution by which the countryside was dominated.

The second reason is that the present state of the English law of the manor is reminiscent of a...

To continue reading

Request your trial
Navigation index

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT