Manorial Records

The first full-length modern manual to offer a structured and comprehensive guide to the use of manorial records, this book is aimed at students of local history and genealogists wishing to improve their research skills and extend their ability to handle medieval documents. It explains the nature and Latin vocabulary of manorial court rolls, rentals and extents, accounts, and custumals; gives guidance and practice in the translation of transcribed documents, with and without abbreviations; and provides more than 30 reproductions of actual manuscript documents in a variety of hands, from the mid-12th to the 18th centuries. Full answers to all exercises are given, together with a glossary of all the words normally found in manorial records. It also includes lists of declensions and conjugations and further palaeographic aids. The manor was for centuries the main unit of local government and virtually the only source of written local records. Once the local or family historian has taken his researches back beyond the mid-16th century, manorial records must be the greatest hope for information, while as late as the 18th century they can continue to provide a major source of evidence for those able to transcribe and, if necessary, translate them. In the compilation of this important and long-needed guide, the author has drawn on more than 30 years’ experience in teaching Latin for local history and of research into manorial records. It breaks new ground and fills the last great gap that remained in the record user’s armory of practical guides to the whereabouts and use of historical source material.