Manorial Documents

Fancy letters and famous faces

28/09/2016 by Northumberland Archives

Having previously looked at marks made by clerks and residents of the manors, we will now look beyond the doodles to decorative letters and drawings that are works of art in themselves. Though these had been commonly used in the medieval period their use declined through the centuries, and by the seventeenth century were reserved for a few areas of written texts, such as the legal documents like deeds. In those occasions where they remained they became less about the content of the text and more for decoration. as we go through our manorial documents we often come across examples that are eye-catching.

Below is a nice example of a letter done with shapes and swirls.

One that is a little more complicated…

More complicated still…

Or this one, from a document of Charles I, which takes it further…

This is so stylised it becomes difficult to make out the ‘C’ it represents.

However, many examples contain drawings. In the medieval manuscripts these are known as historiated initials and inhabited initials. A historiated initial relates to a picture in the letter that relates to the text, where an inhabited letter is purely decorative. The below sixteenth century example is an inhabited letter, which includes a rather unusual face. Perhaps he goes back to earlier traditions of the psalter and other illuminated works.

We start to see images of the monarch used in some documents such as deeds, and these historiated initials are very skilfully and professionally done. The monarch would be depicted in a cartouche, often attached to the first letter of their name. The earliest example we have come across is James I:

James is shown on his throne next to a stylised ‘J’. Under his cloak he appears to be shown in medieval dress. His shoes are certainly of a much older style, quite unlike the decorative heeled shoes he is usually depicted wearing. Next to the image are the symbols for England (rose), Scotland (thistle) and Wales (fleur-de-lis) joined together, illustrating that the three countries were united by his rule. The swirls turning to leaves may also hark back to an early style of decorating pages.

Next we have James’s son, Charles I.

We can see Charles I in a cartouche, surrounded with ornate patterned decoration and a panel showing roses, unicorns, and other emblems of state, with swirling rose leaves filling the space. The letters are also very ornately decorated. The image of Charles is very well drawn, and shows him with the crown, orb and sceptre.

We have also come across Charles’s granddaughter, Queen Anne. This, like many decorated examples, is an ‘Exemplification of Recovery’, which recorded the breaking or ‘barring’ of an entail (a passage of land solely down the family line), so that the land became fee simple and could be mortgaged, sold or willed to someone not in the entail. They became obsolete in 1833, but were often highly decorated with the monarch’s image and seal to show authenticity.

Queen Anne, from an Exemplification of Recovery, 1710.

Here we see Queen Anne in a cartouche, with her hair elaborately curled and wearing a chain of jewels. The pearl necklace she wears is perhaps the one still owned and worn by the royal family today.

Detail from the same Exemplification of Recovery, 1710.

Further along the top of the same document we see a great deal of detailed decoration. The swirling leaves in Charles I’s decoration have grown to become huge scrolling acanthus leaves, which support a rose, and cover much of the top section. Between the leaves we have the Royal coat of arms of Great Britain. This has Queen Anne’s own motto beneath it – ‘Semper Eadem’, meaning ‘always the same’.

These are some examples we have come across in our research, but there are a great many more in our collection, including this beautiful and ostentatious deed from the reign of George II. The decoration transforms an ordinary legal document into something fantastic and beautiful, and gives an added value to the claim that it upholds. We will be keeping our eyes peeled for more monarchs and interesting letters as the project continues.

It’s our custom – day to day life in the manorial documents

24/08/2016 by Northumberland Archives

We can learn a lot about everyday life in the manor by looking at how it was organised. Using manorial documents we can identify individuals and look at what ‘customs’ (rules) they were required to live by, and how they bent or broke the rules that their manor imposed. You could be ‘presented’ before the manor to be ‘amerced’ (fined) for anything from large offences like cheating buyers at your market stall, to not having your chimney in correct repair or cutting back a tree hanging into a neighbour’s garden. Between different manors these rules could be strikingly different.

The customs were upheld by a number of different officials. A Bailiff or Reeve (paid and unpaid versions of the same post) took on the day to day running of the manor. He might be assisted by a barleyman (‘byelaw man’ in charge of upholding the bye laws of the manor), Pinder or pounder (in charge of impounding livestock), lookers (into a particular area, such as fencelooker who examined boundaries and fences), among other roles depending on the needs of the manor. We find evidence of these officials in the manorial documents.

NRO 672/A/3/87 first page giving details of Hexham manor, the names of the borough Jury and the Afeerors. — Part of the first page of NRO 672/A/3/87 giving details of Hexham manor, the names of the Borough Jury and the Afeerors.

To show how customs worked we will take Hexham manor as an example. In Hexham we have an excellent series of what is known as the Borough Jury books (often spelt ‘burrow books’) from the seventeeth to nineteenth century which give ‘presentments’ (judgements of cases) jurored by a group of the townsmen known as the four and twenty. These books list other roles like the common keepers, market keepers, waits, affeerors, and scavengers. Affeerors were appointed from among the tenants to ensure amercements (fines) were kept fair. Waits were watchmen, often required to sound the hour. The (often female) scavengers swept the market and maintained street gutters in the town, fighting against the piles of rubbish (also ashes, thatch, weeds, gravel, bark and stones) Hexham’s townspeople were presented for leaving.

Detail from NRO 672/A/3/87 giving the names of the Scavengers.

Other roles can also be found:

Leaving your mark – strange signatures in the court documents

10/05/201610/05/2016 by Northumberland Archives

In the course of looking through some of the manorial sources we are using on the project we see a lot of different types of handwriting. Some are beautifully practiced and elegant, others scribbled and hard to decipher. Examples like the one below from Morpeth in 1659 show how different letters can look to modern eyes, but with time and patience they can be worked out.

This however is the handwriting of educated clerks and court officials. Most of the rest of the population would have been illiterate, so it would be required for them to give a ‘mark’ of some description. For more affluent classes this may be shown by a seal, but in most cases a simple ‘X’ would show they had been present and gave their agreement to the document being signed. However more complicated marks could be devised by an individual to identify themselves. Such identifiers are found in other areas of medieval and post-medieval life. Masons’ marks on stone would identify who had prepared each block, and would often be passed down families, with additions by each generation. Likewise potters would mark the underside of their work to show its provenance in their workshop. Though we have featured the document below previously, this is a good example of a document signed by numerous people with their own marks.

There are several ways these men have chosen their mark. John Roddam (1st line) has taken the ‘R’ from his surname. Conversely Ridley Havelock (4th line) has used the initial ‘R’ from his first name, and the same can be found with ‘T’ for William Taylor (6th line) and Thomas Pattason (8th line). William Ransom (last line) uses a bold ‘W’ of two crossed V’s like witches’ marks, and perhaps Thomas Smith’s (10th line) began as a ‘T’, but was added to. The ‘N’ of Nicholas Ridley (2nd line) is reversed, and William Coulson (12th line) could be an inverted ‘C’, or reflect a horseshoe or other device. The others seem to be choosing marks unrelated to their name, similar to simple marks like the masons’ marks.

We are keeping our eyes peeled for interesting examples like these as we look through the manorial documents we hold, and were excited to share a recent discovery that has given us much discussion and food for thought. In the image below we see a ‘H’ used by Humphrey Heatherington like the previous examples, and John Heatherington’s half-cross is much like that used by John Reay (11th line). A squiggle also represents a mark or signature used by William Marshall. However our favourite is that used by John Riches, a doodle perhaps symbolising a hook, or even a bird.

We would love to be able to work out what it means, if anyone has any suggestions please let us know! In the meantime we will keep looking for other interesting examples.

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