Parcels
| Author | Christopher Jessel |
| Pages | 111-142 |
Chapter 7 Parcels
7.1 LIMITS OF THE MANOR
Manors were not fixed, geographical units. Before 1189 they could expand or contract. Since then they can only contract, save under special conditions such as inclosure Acts described below. The areas of land that make up the manor are known as parcels. This chapter describes how parcels became separated from the manor and the extent to which, if separated, they could again become part or parcel of it. As a manor is a unit of custom (4.1) which applies to particular pieces of land, once it became impossible to have a new custom after 1189 it was no longer possible for additional land to become comprised in a manor. Until Quia Emptores 1290 part of a manor could by subinfeudation become comprised in a sub-manor. Until 1897 a manor could be divided (8.3).
Some manors were defined on the ground as lying within a single continuous boundary which could be perambulated. The Anglo-Saxon predecessors were described in boks as so bounded. After the eleventh century this was unusual. The lands of one manor were intermixed with lands of others and with lands outside any manor. After 1290 this became increasingly frequent as lands were granted away from the manor. If there were two or more manors in a village the strips would be intermixed in the open field. Some lands might be distant from the manorial centre and not attached to other manorial lands.
In recent years some people who have bought a manor have sought to have a map drawn up. As explained in 25.7, when before 2003 lords were seeking to register titles to their manors the Land Registration Rules
1 SR&O 1925/1093, r 51.
112 The Law of the Manor
of being recognised as owner of roadside waste (6.5) or other miscellaneous
pieces of land.
Boundaries may be relevant to the location of a court which has to be held within the manor (13.2). It may be important that someone is a man of the manor,
Ancient boundaries could be arbitrary but tended to corresponded to natural features such as rivers or to obvious manmade features such as prehistoric banks or Roman roads. The limits of cultivated land were clear because each tenant acknowledged his own lord and attended his manor court. Where the boundary crossed the waste it might be less evident. Often it did not matter where on the waste the cattle were grazing as those of the tenants of adjacent manors were allowed to stray onto each other’s waste under the rule known as vicinage
(10.4). When mineral rights came to be exploited and when inclosure of waste was undertaken in the eighteenth century there could be serious boundary disputes. Section 39 of the Inclosure Act 1845 provided for boundaries to be resolved, suggesting that many were still uncertain as late as that. When in the 1970s ownership of common land had to be registered under the Commons Registration Act 1965 a number of these disputes, some involving 100 acres or more, came to light. Such disputes had rumbled on for centuries but had never been resolved because the value of the waste was not worth the costs of a law suit. If the rival claimants could not agree, the issue had to be determined by the Commons Commissioner, at least for the purposes of the 1965 Act, although that was not necessarily conclusive in other contexts such as land registration.
7.2 OUTLIERS AND DISTRIBUTED LANDS
The imaginary manor of Middleton described at 1.1 was a geographical unit, but few manors were like that. Most had a definite centre, around the manor house and where the court was held, but there were also detached parts that lay outside the main focus, known as outliers. These could have different origins.
The most ancient outliers were summer pastures. These can be found all over the country but are typical of certain areas such as Kent and Sussex where a
2 Iveagh v Martin [1961] 1 QB 232, [1960] 2 All ER 668.
3 Re Mansfield District Council's Application (1976) 33 P&CR 141, 241 EG 241.
manor in the coastal plain might include land in the Weald. The name ‘Midsomer Norton’ in Somerset suggests a similar arrangement and the practice is also found in Gloucestershire. Many such detached lands later developed into full manors in their own right. These arrangements may go back to prehistoric times when a community would go up with their flocks to the hills to seek pasture in summer and those pastures were part of the communal lands. Such arrangements have lasted until modern times in parts of southern Europe. In England the practice of summer grazing on pastures at some distance from the manor seems to have become unusual after the twelfth century, but the lords continued to claim jurisdiction over the separate lands.
A second outlier was the town house. Domesday Book does not include London in its description but many of the manors in the Home Counties, such as Walthamstow and Barking in Essex, are described as including houses within the City of London
The third, and most common, type of outlier was the isolated parcel, perhaps a house and garden, perhaps a farm, many miles from the centre of the manor. Some of these derived from the Saxon system of soc, that certain socmen had the privilege of going with their land to whichever lord they chose, or deciding whose jurisdiction they would accept. After 1066 when jurisdiction and tenure were combined the land became part of the manor and stayed so even when the tenant changed. Many such isolated parts remained in the same manor until modern times. Even if it ceased to be part of the manor, the land might be a detached part of a parish originally based on a manor until the nineteenth century ecclesiastical and local government reorganisations.
Even within a settlement the manor was rarely a geographical unit within a ring-fence.
4 Maitland, FW, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge University Press, 1987; first published
1897) 114.
5 Bracton, Sir Henry, De legibus et consuetudinibus angliae (c 1257) f 434; cf Maitland op cit 136; Hilton, RH, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Clarendon Press, 1975) 132.
114 The Law of the Manor
in 1608.
The reason may derive from landholdings in the former kingdom of Sussex or it may relate to the way in which the Anglo-Saxon Church held rights in various properties which later came to be administered as separate manors. Others were the result of the break-up of the Anglo-Saxon multiple estates which had pieces carved out of them, leaving a scattered residue (2.3). In the rest of the country few villages were divided between more than three or four manors. That may have been because two originally adjacent but separate settlements merged; others arose when a single manor was divided, perhaps between co-heiresses
(8.3).
7.3 SUBINFEUDATION AND QUIA EMPTORES 1290
Such unity as the manor possessed was further disrupted by the statute Quia Emptores. Wholly new manors could not be created after 1189 because new customs could not then arise (4.1). The result of Quia Emptores was that no new sub-manors could be created by an act of the parties after 1290 and manors could only be divided between co-parceners as described in 8.3. Within the manor demesne or waste land could not be granted by subinfeudation to be held of the lord
Originally the fee, or fief, feudum or feu, was the reward granted in land for services rendered (22.5). Particularly in military tenures there was a close personal bond between the lord and his follower who became his tenant. By the end of the thirteenth century this personal bond had weakened and become commercialised, but the theory still governed the rules and had three consequences. First, assume Sir Hugh is the lord of land held by Ralph for which Ralph owes services. Ralph wishes to sell his land (or some of it) to Guy. If the...
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