Lord of the manor

The lord of the manor is the person who holds the lordship: the bundle of rights and dignities attached to a specific manor. The title is neither a peerage nor a knighthood. It does not confer a seat in Parliament, a coat of arms, or the right to be addressed as “Lord” in general usage. It is a feudal dignity, the lowest rung of the English tenurial system, and it has existed continuously since the Norman Conquest.

How lordships were held

From 1066 until the Tenures Abolition Act 1660, lordships were held as part of the feudal chain. The lord held the manor from a superior lord, who held from the Crown. The tenure carried obligations: military service, castle guard, rent, suit of court, or other duties specified at the time of the original grant. These obligations defined the relationship between lord and overlord and could be enforced through the courts.

The most common forms of tenure were knight service (owing mounted military service), serjeanty (owing a specific personal service), free alms (held by religious houses with no secular obligation), and socage (owing a fixed rent or agricultural service). After 1660, all tenures were converted to common socage, and the practical obligations fell away.

Methods of transfer

A lordship could pass from one holder to the next by inheritance, grant, purchase, marriage, or escheat (reversion to the overlord when a tenant died without heirs or was convicted of felony). In the medieval period, inheritance followed the rules of primogeniture: the eldest son took the manor. Where there was no son, the manor was divided among daughters as coparceners. This division of manors among co-heiresses is one of the principal reasons that many medieval manors were split into fractions, each fraction eventually becoming a separate manor in its own right.

Sales of manorial lordships have been recorded since at least the thirteenth century. In modern law, a lordship is classified as an incorporeal hereditament: a right that can be inherited or conveyed but has no physical substance. It is personal property and can be registered at the Land Registry under the Land Registration Act 2002. Lordships not registered before 13 October 2013 lost the ability to be noted on the register, though the title itself remains valid.

What the lordship includes today

A modern lordship of the manor typically includes: the title itself (the right to describe oneself as lord of the manor of a named place); any rights over the manorial waste (uncultivated common land not held by a tenant); and any mineral rights not already separated from the lordship. It does not include any land (unless separately conveyed), any jurisdiction, or any right to impose obligations on others.

Certain manorial rights were preserved by statute. Section 62 of the Law of Property Act 1925 provides that a conveyance of land includes all rights attached to it, but the lordship itself can be severed from the land and sold separately. This separation became common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as estates were broken up. Many lordships were sold at auction, often to purchasers with no connection to the manor or its land.

Lordship and the Manorial Documents Register

The lord of the manor was historically the custodian of the manor's records: its court rolls, surveys, maps, and terriers. The Manorial Documents Register at the National Archives tracks where these documents are now held. In many cases, the records passed with the lordship when it was sold. In others, they were deposited at county record offices, university libraries, or the National Archives itself. The Manorial Documents Rules 1959 (as amended) require that manorial documents cannot be destroyed without the permission of the Master of the Rolls.

Tracing a lordship

The chain of lords for any given manor is reconstructed from a combination of sources. The Victoria County History provides the fullest published accounts, drawing on Inquisitions Post Mortem, Feudal Aids, Feet of Fines, and other records. For the post-medieval period, title deeds, probate records, and Land Registry entries supplement the published sources. Where the VCH account ends, the trail must be continued through record offices and private archives.