The Manorial Documents Register

Manorial Document Register

The Manorial Courts were an important part of any rural community, and the records of the courts can be very useful in tracking back family lines at a time when parish registers were not available. The problem is that even when they have survived they may be held in many different depositories - or even be in private hands. I am afraid I have tended to ignore them on this site because I don't have easy access, but a recent announcement about the Manorial Document Register had alerted me to the need to publicise them.

I did a quick search for several Hertfordshire manors: 

Tring - 57 entries - Mostly at HALS, some in the National Archives, a few in Lambeth Palace Library

Tring Rectory - 18 entries - all at HALS

Betlow (a  tiny ancient manor in the old parish of Tring where some of my ancestors were Lord of the Manor in Victorian Times) - 10 entries - most at HALS, two at British Library - none after 1695

Sandridge (One when I have actually worked with some of the original records) - 43 entries - most at the Northampton Records Office, more at HALS, others in the British Library and National Archives.

Of course the record only tells you where you need to go to see the original documents, many of which will be full of names - but unindexed. In addition many of the earlier ones will be in Medieval Latin, and even those in English could be in clerical hand - which need practice to read well. So manorial records are definitely not for those of you who expect everything to be indexed online in clear text ...

Herts Past & Present - Autumn 2012 - No 20

The Autumn Issue of Herts Past and Present (published by the Hertfordshire Association for Local History) is out and the following description of the three main papers is based on the editorial.

The poor are always with us. In Begging Letters from Hertfordshire paupers living away from home the poor from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries speak to us in a particularly vivid way, through their letters written in desperation to Hertfordshire parish overseers. Carla Herrmann's study of fifty such begging letters reveals a range o' causes of their destitution: from disease, violent insanity, to injury caused by accidents at work. Widows with dependent children had a particularly hard time of it. Grace Pryor, whose husband had died after falling down a well in Royston leaving her with three children, got short shrift from the Royston overseer in 1783. He sent her back to Heydon in Essex, whence she had originated. Then as now it was economic interests that counted in the decision whether or not to offer support. If you couldn't prove your worth to the parish you had a struggle to claim benefit. "Supportive attitudes appear to have been comparatively rare" is the author's conclusion so far. 

Sarah Lloyd's intriguing article "Tickets Please!" Survivals from eighteenth-century Hertfordshire tells us what tickets can tell us about social history and is a summary of our Lionel Munby lecture at the AGM in May. It shows just what can be read into these most ephemeral of items. That old ticket found under a floorboard tells a story offering a window into many varied aspects of eighteenth-century life. 

Researchers into The Manors of Watford will find the list of sources suggested by Gordon Cox most helpful. The Victoria County History is recognised as no longer adequate to the task. Ranging further afield the quest could take you as far afield as Reading, Woking, Chester and California. Not to mention London, Oxford and Cambridge. Why can't records stay put?