Part 11

* * * * * * *

All who have at any time owned or purchased what is known as copyhold land might be supposed to know something of the nature of the title on which such land is held. If they do not it is not for want of being reminded from time to time, in a very vexatious way, that they are in theory and in fact not so much owners of their several holdings as tenants of the Lord of the Manor to which such holdings appertain. But inasmuch as a great deal of ignorance prevails as to the nature of this tenure, and as it is impossible to estimate the value and importance of the evidence which the Rolls of the Manor Courts supply in the inquiry on which we are engaged, I feel it necessary to introduce at this point a few paragraphs introductory to and explanatory of what follows.

* * * * * * *

In the thirteenth century it may be said that in theory the land of England belonged to the sovereign. The sovereign had indeed assigned large tracts of territory to A or B or C; but under certain circumstances, of no very unfrequent occurrence, these tracts of territory came back into the hands of the sovereign, and were re-granted by him at his will to whom he chose. In return for such grants, A or B or C were bound to perform certain services in recognition of the fact that they were tenants of the king; and by virtue of such services-the equivalents of what we now understand by rent-they were called tenants in chief, or tenants in capite.

The tracts of territory held by A or B or C were in almost every case made up of lands scattered about over all parts of the kingdom. The tenant in chief had his castle or capital mansion, [Footnote: Experts will object to the use of this term and other terms as strictly inaccurate. I am not writing for experts.]which was supposed to be his abode; but as far as the larger portion--immensely the larger portion--of his possessions, he was necessarily a non-resident landlord, getting what he could out of them either by farming them through the agency of a bailiff, or letting out his estates to be held under himself in precisely the same way as he held his fief, or original grant, from the King.

In theory, the tenant in chief could not sell his land; he could sublet it to a mesne tenant, who stood to himself precisely in the same relation as he--the tenant in capite--stood to the sovereign, the mesne tenant in his turn being bound to render certain services to his over lord, and liable to forfeit his lease--for in theory it was that--if certain contingencies happened. It was inevitable that, as time went by, the mesne tenant should regard his estate as his own, and that the same necessities which compelled the tenant in capite to relax his hold over an outlying landed estate would compel the mesne tenant to follow his example. The process went on till it was becoming a serious difficulty to discover how the King was to get his services from the tenant in capite, who had practically got rid of two-thirds of his fief, and how he again was to get his services from the mesne tenant, who had parted with two-thirds of his estate to half a dozen under tenants. Obviously, when the King's scutage had to be levied, there was no telling who was liable for it, or how it should be apportioned.

It was to meet this difficulty, and to check the prevailing sub-division of land--sub-infeudation men called it then--that the statute of Quia Emptores was passed in the eighteenth year of King Edward I. [A.D. 1290]. The result of all the sub-division that been going on had been that the number of what we now call landed estates had largely increased, each of them administered on the model of the larger fiefs originally granted to the tenants in capite. There was a capital mansion in which the lord resided, or was supposed to reside, and sub-tenants holding their land under the lord, and paying to him periodically certain small money rents and rendering him certain services. The estate comprehended the capital mansion with its appurtenances and the domain lands in the lord's occupation, the common lands over which the tenants had certain common rights, and the lands in the occupation of the tenants, which they farmed with more or less freedom for their own behoof,--the whole constituting a manor whose owner was the lord. At certain intervals the tenants were bound to appear before their lord and give account of themselves; bound, that is, to show cause why they had not performed their services; bound to pay their quit rents, whether in money or kind; bound to go through a great deal of queer business; but above all, as far as our present purpose is concerned, to do fealty to the lord of the manor in every case where the small patches of land had changed hands, and pay a fine for entering upon land acquired by the various forms of alienation or by inheritance. In some manors, if a tenant died the lord laid claim to some of his live stock as a heriot, which was forthwith seized by the bailiff of the manor; and in all manors, if a man died without heirs, his land escheated to the lord of the manor; that is, it came back to the lord who in theory was the owner of the soil.

These periodical meetings at which all this business and a great deal else was transacted were called the Courts of the Manor, and the Records of these Courts were kept with exceeding and most jealous scrupulousness; they were invariably drawn up in Latin, according to a strictly legal form, and were inscribed on long rolls of parchment, and are known as Manor Court Rolls. This is not the time to say much more about the Court Rolls. They are not very easy reading--they require a somewhat long apprenticeship before they can be readily deciphered; but when one has once become familiar with them, they afford the student some very curious and unexpected information from time to time, though it must be allowed that you have to do a good deal of digging for every nugget that you find.

Observe, however, this--that it is not far from the truth to say that in East Anglia--for I will not travel out of my own province--every tiller of the soil who occupied a plot of land, however small, was sure to be a tenant under some lord of the manor; when he died a record of his death was entered upon the Court Rolls of the Manor; the name of his successor was inscribed; the amount of fine set down which his heir paid for entering upon his inheritance; and if he died without heirs the fact was noticed, the lands which he had held being forfeited, or escheating, as it was called, to the lord.

Thus the Court Rolls of a manor of the fourteenth century--for before the statute Quia Emptores I suspect that they were kept with much less regularity and much less care than they were afterwards--are practically the registers of the deaths of all occupiers of land within the manor; and, as every householder was an occupier of land, the death of every householder may be said to be inscribed upon the Rolls.

* * * * * * *

Taken together, then, we have in the Diocesan Institution Books, on the one hand, and in the Court Rolls, on the other, two sources of information which--as far as they go--furnish us with a mass of evidence absolutely irrefragable with regard to the mortality of clergy and laity at any period during the fourteenth century. I say "as far as they go," for it might happen that a country benefice--and still more frequently that a town benefice--had been so cruelly pillaged by a religious house, that little or nothing remained to support the wretched parson, and that no one could be found who would accept the cure. Then the cure would remain vacant for years. Where this happened the death of the previous incumbent would not appear on the Records for years after it had occurred, nor would any notice be taken of the long vacancy when the next parson was instituted. In a period of dreadful mortality, if the parsons died off in large numbers, it would be inevitable that the impoverished livings would "go a begging." It might be difficult to get the most valuable pieces of preferment filled--it would be impossible to fill such as could not offer a bare maintenance. Hence the Institution Books can only be accepted as giving a part of the evidence with regard to the clerical mortality. However startling the number of deaths of clergy within a certain area during a given period may appear to be, they certainly will not represent the whole number--only the number of such incumbents as were forthwith replaced by their successors; and, taking one year with another, it is fair to say that within any diocese the larger the number of institutions recorded in a given time, the more incomplete will be the record of the deaths among the clergy during that time. When there are more men than places the places are soon filled. When there are more places than men there must needs be vacancies--square holes and round ones.

So much for the Institution Books. With regard to the Court Rolls, there the evidence is even much less exhaustive; for here we have the registers of the deaths of the landholders within the manor, great and small--i.e., of the heads of families; but, except in rare instances, we have no notice of any other member of the household, or of what happened to them. A man's whole household may have been swept off--young and old, babe and suckling, sister and brother, and aged mother, and wife, and children, and servant, and friend--every soul of them involved in one hideous, horrible calamity. The steward of the manor was not concerned with any but the head of the house--the tenant of the manor. Was he missing? Then, who was his heir? Any sons? Dead of the plague! Brothers? Dead of the plague! Wife? Dead of the plague! Children? Kinsfolk? All gone! Their blackening carcases huddled in sweltering masses of putrefaction in the wretched hovels, while the pitiless July sun blazed overhead, "Calmer than clock-work, and not caring!"

The steward made his entry of one fact only. Thus:--

"The Jurors do present that Simon Must died seized of a Messuage and 4 acres of land in Stradset, and that he has no heir. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord."

Also that Matilda Stile... was she married or single, widow or mother or maid? What cared the precise man of business on that 24th of July, 1349, as his pen moved over the parchment?...--"Matilda Stile died seized of one acre and one rood of land held in Villenage. Therefore it is fitting that the aforesaid land be taken into the hands of the lord until such time as the heir may appear in court."

He never did appear! Next year her little estate was handed over to another. She was the last of her line.

Such entries as these swarm in the Court Rolls of this year 1349. They tell their own tale. But it is obvious that their tale is incomplete, and that we must form our own conclusions from the number of the deaths recorded as to the probable number of those whose names have been quite passed over, sometimes, too, these Rolls are eloquent in their silence. When country parsons were dying by scores and hundreds, and the tillers of the soil by thousands and tens of thousands, it could not but be that the lords of manors and their stewards died also. Yes! they, too, were struck down. In one instance that I have met with the first half of the entries of the business carried on at one of these courts in the summer of this year is written in the ordinary court hand of the time, and the rest is rudely scrawled by some one whose hand is not yet formed; it looks like the writing of a lad apprenticed to the scrivener's business. Was the steward of the manor actually smitten by the plague as he was holding the court--a subordinate taking his place and awkwardly finishing the work which his master's glazed eye perhaps never rested on? Again and again I have found that a series of Court Rolls of an important Norfolk manor is perfect for the first twenty-two years of Edward III. and no record remains for the next year or two. Then they begin once more, and have been preserved with unbroken regularity. At Raynham, in a parish of 1,400 acres, there were three small manors. The courts of one of them were held three times in the year 1348. Upon the same parchment, and immediately following the records of the previous year, come some scarcely legible notes of a court held in 1349, the precise day of the month omitted, the entries scrawled informally by a scribe who not only did not know the forms of the court, but who was evidently not a professional writer. He bungled so that he seems actually to have given up his task. The next court of the manor was not held till three years had gone by. At Hellhoughton, a manor now belonging to the Marquis of Townshend, where two courts were held annually, the series of rolls for the first twenty-two years of Edward III. is complete. Then comes one which scarcely deserves to be called a Court Roll, so entirely informal is it, and so evidently drawn up by some one who did not know his business, and who did not pretend to know it. It is little more than a collection of rough memoranda of deaths. Twelve of the suitors of the court had died without heirs; seven others had come to do fealty to the lord as successors to those whose heirs they presumably were. Nothing else is recorded. At another manor of Lord Townshend's, Raynham Parva, between the years 1347 and 1350 no court seems to have been held, though the lord of the manor, Thomas de Ingaldesthorp, had died in the interval. The scourge of the plague had been so awful in its incidence that when the next court was held on the 24th July, 1350, fourteen men and four women (holders of land, be it remembered) are named as having died off, not one of whom had left a living representative behind them. In all cases their little holdings had escheated to the lord. Amongst them was one "John Taleour, clericus." Was he the clerk who, up to this time, had kept the Rolls so neatly, and who could not be easily replaced after he fell a victim to the plague?

Indeed, the inquirer who is desirous of pursuing researches in this field must be prepared for frequent disappointment just at the moment when he thinks he has made a "find." The Court Rolls for this particular year are comparatively scarce, and this is true not only for East Anglia, but for the whole of England, as any one may see who will only cast his eye down those pages of the Deputy-Keeper's Forty-third Annual Report, which are concerned with the Records of the Duchy of Lancaster. These registers of deaths are, as I have before said, only complete as far as they go.

* * * * * * *

Let us now return to the point at which the King's letter of prorogation left us on the 10th March, 1349. At that time it is certain that the pestilence was raging fiercely in London and Westminster, and almost as certain that it had abated in Avignon and other towns in France. Two or three days after this date the Bishop of Norwich crossed the Channel, leaving his diocese in the hands of his officials. Had the plague broken out with any severity in East Anglia? I think it almost demonstrable that it had not. A day or two before the Bishop left London he instituted his friend Stephen de Cressingham to the Deanery of Cranwich--in the west of Norfolk--which had fallen vacant, but there is nothing to show that the vacancy was due to anything out of the common. During the year ending 25th of March, 1349, there were 80 institutions in the diocese of Norwich, as against 92 in the year 1347 and 59 in the year 1346. The average number of institutions for the five years ending 25th of March, 1349, was 77. Between this date and the end of the month there were four institutions only--that is, there was nothing abnormal in the condition of the diocese.

East Anglia had not long to wait. In the valley of the Stour, a mile or two from Sudbury, where the stream serves as the boundary between Suffolk and Essex, the ancestors of Lord Walsingham had two manors in the township of Little Cornard--the one was called Caxtons, the other was the Manor of Cornard Parva. At this latter manor a court was held on the 31st of March--the number of tenants of the manor can at no time have exceeded fifty--yet at this court six women and three men are registered as having died since the last court was held, two months before.

This is the earliest instance I have yet met with of the appearance of the plague among us, and as it is the earliest, so does it appear to have been one of the most frightful visitations from which any town or village in Suffolk or Norfolk suffered during the time the pestilence lasted. On the 1st of May another court was held, fifteen more deaths are recorded--thirteen men and two women. Seven of them without heirs. On the 3rd of November, apparently when the panic abated, again the court met. In the six months that had passed thirty-six more deaths had occurred, and thirteen more households had been left without a living soul to represent them. In this little community, in six months' time, twenty-one families had been absolutely obliterated--men, women and children--and of the rest it is difficult to see how there can have been a single house in which there was not one dead. Meanwhile, some time in September, the parson of the parish had fallen a victim to the scourge, and on the 2nd of October another was instituted in his room. Who reaped the harvest? The tithe sheaf too--how was it garnered in the barn? And the poor kine at milking time? Hush! Let us pass on.

* * * * * * *

Little Cornard lies almost at the extreme south of the county of Suffolk. At the extreme north of Norfolk, occupying the elbow of the coast, having the Wash on the west and the German Ocean on the north, lies the deanery of Heacham, a district in which the Le Stranges have for at least seven centuries exercised their beneficent influence. Heacham itself is a large township extending over some 4,900 acres. The manorial rights appear to have extended over the whole parish. The series of Court Rolls is almost unbroken for the reign of Edward III. During the years 1346, 1347, and 1348, ten, six, and nine deaths are registered respectively. The courts were held every two months. In December, 1348, there is no death recorded; in February, 1349, again there is none. On the 28th of April a dispute was set down for hearing to be adjudicated upon by the steward and a jury of the homage. It was a dispute between a husband and wife on a question of dower. The man's name was Reginald Goscelin, his wife's name was Emma. The dispute was never settled. Before the day of hearing came on, every one of Emma Goscelin's witnesses was dead, and her husband was dead too. Four other landowners had died. One of these latter had a son and heir to succeed, but two months later the boy had gone, and the sole representative of the family was a little girl, who became straightway the ward of the lord of the manor.

Contiguous to the township of Heacham lies Hunstanton--not the pleasant little watering-place which the million will persist in calling by that name, though scarcely forty years ago the maker and builder of the modern town, the man who marked out its streets and planned its roads, and foresaw its future before a brick of the place was laid, gave it the name of St. Edmunds--Hunstanton, I say, in the fourteenth century was a parish less than half the size of Heacham, and probably much further from the sea than it is now. When, on the 20th of March, 1349, the steward of the manor of Hunstanton held his court there he entered the name of only one old woman who had died within the last month--that is, up to the 20th of March the plague had not yet appeared. Five weeks after this, on the 23rd of April, the next court was held. Five petty disputes had been entered for hearing. Sixteen men were engaged in them as principals or witnesses. When the day came eleven of the sixteen were dead. On the 22nd of May again there was a court, and again three suits for debt were set down. The defendant in one case, the plaintiff in a second, both plaintiff and defendant in the third, died before the court day arrived. In June no court was held--was there a panic? Except in this month and in September the meetings were carried on as regularly as if it had all been done by machinery. In September things got to their worst, and in this month the parson died, and was speedily succeeded by another. When the court of the 16th of October sat, it was found that in two months sixty-three men and fifteen women had been carried off. In thirty-one instances there were only women or children to succeed; in nine cases there were no heirs, and the little estates had escheated to the lord. Incredible though it may sound the fact is demonstrable, that in this one parish of Hunstanton, which a man may walk round in two or three hours, and the whole population of which might have assembled in the church then recently built, one hundred and seventy-two persons, tenants of the manor, died off in eight months; seventy-four of them left no heirs male, and nineteen others had no blood relation in the world to claim the inheritance of the dead.

I have no intention of laying before my readers a detailed statement of the documentary evidence which has passed under my notice. The time has not come yet for an elaborate report on the case, nor can I pretend to have done more than break ground upon what must be regarded still as virgin soil; but this I may safely say, that I have not found one single roll of any Norfolk manor during this dreadful 23rd year of Edward, dating after April or May, which did not contain only too abundant proof of the ravages of the pestilence--evidence which forces upon me the conviction that hardly a town or village in East Anglia escaped the scourge; and which in its cumulative force makes it impossible to doubt that the mortality in Norfolk and Suffolk must have exceeded the largest estimate which has yet been given by conjecture.

When I find in a stray roll of an insignificant little manor at Croxton, near Thetford, held on the 24th of July, that seventeen tenants had died since the last court, eight of them without heirs; that at another court held the same day at Raynham, at the other end of the county, eighteen tenements had fallen into the lord's hands, eight of them certainly escheated, and the rest retained until the appearance of the heir; that in the manor of Hadeston, a hamlet of Bunwell, twelve miles from Norwich, which could not possibly have had four hundred inhabitants, fifty-four men and fourteen women were carried off by the pestilence in six months, twenty-four of them without a living soul to inherit their property; that in manor after manor the lord was carried off as well as the tenants and the steward; that in a single year upwards of eight hundred parishes lost their parsons, eighty-three of them twice, and ten of them three times in a few months; and that it is quite certain these large numbers represent only a portion of the mortality among the clergy and the religious orders--when, I say, I consider all this and a great deal more that might be dwelt on, I see no other conclusion to arrive at but one, namely, that during the year ending March, 1350, more than half the population of East Anglia was swept away by the Black Death. If any one should suggest that many more than half died, I should not be disposed to quarrel with him.