Monks Eleigh was one of the principal units of medieval administration,
providing a legal framework for land tenure, the prosecution of crimes
and misdemeanours and social control.
The manor was one of the principal units of medieval administration,
providing a legal framework for land tenure, the prosecution of crimes
and misdemeanours and social control. For the lord of a manor it was a
source of supplies and income for the maintenance of his status and
power. For the tenants the manor formed the everyday focus of their
working lives, because they typically owed work services on his land and
were subject to the manorial court for wrong doings, the settlement of
disputes, the holding of their lands and payment of various feudal dues.
Manors were the standard unit of land tenure for centuries, but they
changed and developed over time and differed in their administration
according to the particular custom of each manor.
The records of the manor of Monks Eleigh are typical of those which
still exist for hundreds of manors across England. They allow us to
glimpse some of the details of the people who lived and worked there
over a period of some four centuries. In the earliest extents and
accounts we see a concentration on the work services which the unfree
tenants were obliged to do on the lord's lands in lieu of rent,
including ploughing, sowing, harrowing, harvesting, carting, ditching,
hurdle-making and working in the manor vineyard. Accounts list the
lord's stock of animals including oxen, horses, cattle, sheep, geese,
ducks, peacocks and doves. They detail repairs to manorial buildings
such as the hall, barns, mill, dovecote, sheep-cotes and gates. Court
rolls record admissions of tenants to land-holdings as well as fines for
misdemeanours such as trespass on growing crops, assaults and thefts. By
the sixteenth century the rentals show that an increasing number of
tenants were using their manorial land-holdings as investments by living
elsewhere and sub-letting them.
In more general terms, these records can throw light on the development
of manorial administration over time, the changing forms of land tenure,
place name and surname studies, the decline in serfdom, popular unrest
and social mobility.
