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IMC 2020: Sessions

Session 1731: Seeking Justice at Westminster and Beyond, III: Custom and Common Law in the Manor Court

Thursday 9 July 2020, 14.15-15.45

Sponsor:The National Archives
Organiser:Stephanie Brown, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Moderator/Chair:Laura Flannigan, Faculty of History University of Cambridge
Paper 1731-aManorial and Common Law Custom: A Re-Evaluation of Doctrinal Boundaries, c. 1250-1348
(Language: English)
Lorren Eldridge, Faculty of Law University of Oxford
Index terms: Law, Mentalities
Paper 1731-bCommon Law in Manor Courts: Manorial Stewards as Legal Professionals in England, c. 1300
(Language: English)
Susanna Markert, Faculty of History, University of Oxford
Index terms: Law, Social History
Paper 1731-c'The hue will be horned from vill to vill’: The Prosecution of Bloodshed in 14th-Century Yorkshire
(Language: English)
Stephanie Brown, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
Index terms: Law, Social History
Abstract

This session explores the relationship between common and customary law in the late medieval manor court. This includes how local custom could (and did) both diverge from and supplement common law tests for validity; the manorial stewards who had served as common law justices whose legal knowledge was employed in the manor, shaping the local legal culture and expectations of law; and how the frankpledge system, a communal means of policing, once the responsibility of the common law sheriff was now a royal right in private hands of the lord, dealt with hue and cry and bloodshed in the manor court.