The Character of English Rural Society: Earls Colne, 1550-1750 by Henry French & Richard Hoyle

Author:Henry French & Richard Hoyle [French, Henry & Hoyle, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Rural, Great Britain, Europe, Social Science, History, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780719051081
Google: o3a5DwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 6592373
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2007-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Whilst the record of fining on the estates illustrates one aspect of the lord–tenant relationship on the manors, the history of the lords’ attitudes to the right of copyholders to fell timber on their copyhold lands provides another and reveals how the copyhold tenants were far from quiescent. There is a great deal of evidence that lords instinctively believed that timber growing on copyhold was theirs and not the tenants’. Disputes over the rights to timber of lords and tenants had been current throughout East Anglia from the mid-1540s at least.6 Roger Harlakenden’s determination to reclaim that which he naturally supposed was his put his interests in collision with those of the copyholders for almost forty years. Simply, the Harlakendens attempted to restrict the copyhold tenants’ access to the trees growing on their copyholds. They attempted to force them to secure a licence before felling trees and maintained that unlicensed felling would result in forfeiture. A faction amongst the copyhold tenants refused to accept the imposition. In 1616 or 1617 the lord’s claims were tested in the court of Common Pleas and apparently found wanting. Harlakenden seems to have maintained his claims over the tenants’ timber, and in the following decade there was a further suit in Star Chamber, which was settled by an extra-curial arbitration.

It is difficult to establish exactly what the timber custom had been prior to the difficulties of the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford. There are no references to timber felling at all in the court rolls of Earls Colne before 1563, but one case in Colne Priory suggested that some sort of licence was required to fell timber on copyholds. In June 1557 John Brewer was fined for having ‘cut down and lopped divers oaks and other trees growing upon customary land held of the lord as of this manor by the rod etc. called Mooreland he should be deprived of at least twelve [trees] to the value of 8s’.7 It is not clear from this entry how Brewer actually transgressed manorial custom, but he may well have done so by not seeking the permission of the lord before felling the trees. This case appears to be distinct from others in the same court where tenants were fined for stealing timber from the lord’s demesne woods.

In 1561–62, also in Colne Priory, thirty acres of land called Debenhams (or Dednams) were seized into the lord’s hands, ‘for felling timber thereon’.8 In 1563, in the first court held during the earl’s wardship, the homage requested advice about the felling of wood. Those presented included Margery, Countess of Oxford, who had ordered the felling of ninety trees for fuel for her mansion of Colne Priory. The other individuals mentioned, William Wade and Lewis Jegon, held parts of the copyhold land called Bettingsland in Earls Colne manor.9 This interest may have been encouraged by the administrators of the wardship, anxious to establish ways in which the estate could be made more profitable.

The Earls Colne court rolls record no further overt action against woodcutting on copyholds until 1574.

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