The Manorial Documents Register

Article written by Joe Saunders

The manor was once the key building block of feudal landownership in England and Wales. Each manor covered an area roughly similar to a parish, though the areas only sometimes bore correlation. Each manor was held by a lord or lady who held their estate from the Crown and who in turn leased some of those lands to local tenants. In return each tenant had certain obligations and payments due to their lord. The manorial lord or lady was also nominally responsible for overseeing the local community and each manor had a court which supervised issues of local law and order. In the process, many manorial documents came about, 

because there was no central registration of ownership of lands, it was essential that owners could establish proof of their title to property. Manorial records were an important element in that proof. For that reason, then, they can often be found within family and estate archives.[1]

Much landholding and local society was structured through the manorial system, in theory if not always in practice, into the nineteenth century. For hundreds of years a substantial proportion of the population were manorial tenants. 

Enclosure, enfranchisement and other massive social and economic changes made the manor increasingly redundant as a unit of landholding and justice. Though in reality the manorial system had been in decline since the early modern period. Copyhold tenure was eventually abolished in 1922. 

However, many people still had an interest in copyhold lands after 1922 and required access to manorial documents. For this reason, all manorial documents were put under the charge of the Master of the Rolls who set up a committee who set out to establish the existence of each manor and the whereabouts of its relevant administrative documents.[2] Initially the register was only for those with a copyhold interest but is now available to the public. 

Today, the Manorial Documents Register (MDR) 'is the official index to English and Welsh manorial records’, providing brief descriptions of documents and their locations in public and private hands online through The National Archives’ website.[3] The Register is arranged by county and can be searched by manor name and parish. It is always worth searching by a range of keywords as manors could be listed under different names from those you expect. Survival is patchy so the researcher may find few relevant documents. Be warned that because landowners did not always reside near their landholdings, especially if they held many manors, that records may be in a different part of the country.

Ensure that you do not rely on the Manorial Document Register alone when searching for records. Such are the sheer numbers of surviving documents and their illogical spread in archives and other hands across that identifying all such records is an ongoing task. Indeed, The National Archives encourages notification of the existence of records not so far listed. Also, the register ‘only covers records generated by the manorial courts so do not include title deeds and other estate records’.[4] A look through county record office catalogues and discussion with local archives staff is also recommended. However, the Manorial Documents Register should be anyone’s first port of call. 

Read more about the Manorial Documents Register here.

For a fantastic guide to manorial documents in the post-medieval period then see Mark Forrest with Helen Watt, Manors and Manorial Documents after 1500 (2022). 

Sources

[1] Introduction to manorial documents, https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/manorial/introduction.aspx
[2] Manorial Documents Register (MDR), https://www.genguide.co.uk/aid/manorial-documents-register-mdr/
[3] Manorial Documents Register, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/manor-search
[4] Manorial Documents Register (MDR), https://www.genguide.co.uk/aid/manorial-documents-register-mdr/

Main image credit: Part of William R. Shepherd, ‘Plan of a Mediaeval Manor’ in Historical Atlas (1923). Public Domain 

Pharos Course

If you’re interested in studying manorial documents to use for your research then take our course; Manorial Records for Family and Local Historians. This course teaches you how to search for and locate manorial records with confidence and understand how to use them.