By John Watson- Taylor. 73 



CHAPTER IV.— THE MANOR. 



The references that have been made to the manor in previous 

 chapters have been incidental only to the personal history of the 

 dift'erent lords, but in the present chapter the object is to give an 

 account of the manners and customs of the inhabitants and their 

 relations with the lord and with the outside world. 



The material for this purpose is drawn from documents that 

 have already been partially dealt with, but chiefly from the manor 

 court rolls and some ministers' accounts of later periods, which, 

 when tliey are compared with the earlier records, show unmistakable 

 evidence of the antiqul^^y of the customs to which they refer with 

 frequency and minuteness of detail. Of the court rolls a single 

 one has been found for the year 1544, when the manor was in the 

 hands of Henry VIII., and the ministers' accounts relate to that 

 period also, but the most valuable document is a manor court 

 book, which the present lord of the manor — Mr. Watson-Taylor, 

 of Erlestoke Park — has kindly left at the writer's disposal, con- 

 taining records of the proceedings of the courts baron from 1677 

 to 1698 and from 1737 to 1761.^ 



Of the earliest times following after the Conquest the Curia 

 Regis Eoll of 1253 gives some retrospective evidence in the 

 pleadings of counsel for the King, who, when claiming the manor, 

 stated that the land was ancient demesne of the crown that had 

 been wrongfully alienated in the reign of Henry I. To this state- 

 ment the defendant made no answer, but gained his case by showing 

 that there were three other owners of land in the manor who 

 ought to have been, but were not, joined with him as defendants, 

 and although counsel for the King did not take advantage of the 

 permission granted him by the court to sue again on a new writ, 



' The early records were transcribed and the contractions of the latin text 

 extended by the late J. A. C. Vincent, to whose great experience as a record- 

 searcher the discovery of many of them was due, while for their interpretation 

 the authorities used are Professor Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond, 

 ed. 1897, and Mr. Carter's History of Jinglish Legal Inttitutions, ed. 1902. 



