Description

Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors (5th ed) 1999, by A. W. and C. Barsby, xii +527 pp, ISBN 0 9521625 4 7, £45 inc p&p.

Land tenure is a little-know subject nowadays. But for hundreds of years, from mediaeval times into the early part of the 20th century, it was a feature of our land law.

What did it mean?  Landowners were not owners in the full sense of the word, because only the Crown was that: everyone else held land from the Crown, directly or indirectly, in a relationship to which obligations were attached.

In the sevententh century, Thomas Blount started to collect and record the terms on which land was held, because they were intetesting from a historical point of view, and becauswe in some cases they were odd and amusing.  At the same time he collected some of the somertimes quaint local customs which had evolved in different places under the manorial system.  Hence the subtitle of the book– “Blount’s Jocular Tenures”.

The first edition of the book was published in 1679, the second in 1784 and the third in 1850.  A fourth edition was published in 1874 and a supplement to it in 1909.  Along the way, the size of the book had grown substantially, and its purpose had becomne more serious  It is the fourth edition and supplement which we have amalgamated for this new edition.

The booking has over the years been criticised for some inaccuracies, but inaccuracies are hardly surprising given the origins of this work.  It remains a quite fascinating insight into the past, with all its oddities and curiosities, a “must” for anyone interested in the way our ancestors lived centuries ago.