CHAPTER ONE – THE MANOR AND ITS DEVELOPMENT
Introduction
The English manor existed as a working institution from Anglo-Saxon times until the end of 1925. Its zenith ran from the Norman Conquest of 1066 until 1289, when the statute of Quia Emptores initiated a process of gradual decline drawn out over many centuries and not yet concluded. The manor occupied a central place in the property law of England, and from 1536 in the property law of Wales, which did not end until the great legislative reforms contained in the property acts of 1922 to 1925. The ending was not synonymous with extinction, and the presence of the manor in legal analysis of property issues remains today. Legal education and procedural reform have worked to reduce awareness of that presence because legal history is not widely taught, and because manorial cases often raise registration points which are usually assigned to First-tier Tribunal judges or their deputies rather than, as in the past, to Chancery judges. Although reported case law on manorial disputes is now thin, manors remain of continuing importance for questions about land ownership, commons and mineral rights. These questions matter to landowners, developers, local authorities and, increasingly, to those concerned with the commercial exploitation of minerals and renewable energy.
Before 1289: Origins to Quia Emptores
The primary legal concept underlying the manor was the doctrine of tenure – i.e. how land is held of A, with superior title, by B who has inferior title. At the heart of the doctrine was the legal fiction that all land was ultimately held of the Crown. Escheat and bona vacantia are expressions of the fiction today; but in the two centuries after the Norman Conquest the fiction was much closer to reality. In 1066 Duke William of Normandy seized the English Crown and quickly rewarded his supporters with lands taken from the English nobility. This involved the imposition of a feudal structure on Anglo-Saxon landholdings. While landholdings varied in size, they operated on a basis of open field farming where land around settlements was divided into strips for cultivation. Sheep and cattle grazed on common lands, while uncultivated outlying lands, known as waste, were gradually diminished by the process of assart which involved reclaiming waste for use as arable or pasture.
Anglo-Saxon England had operated a manorial system, but one which still reflected tribal loyalties and was less rigid in its institutions and obligations compared with the more thorough-going Norman feudalism which took its place. Norman feudalism was a social, political and economic system that made the peasantry dependent on land and its lord at a time when royal power was weak and security depended on the protection which only the strong could provide. Its structure is often likened to a pyramid with its foundation resting on personal ties of service. At its apex stood the king as lord paramount; at its base were serfs, who differed from slaves only in that their lives were regulated by custom of the land to which they were attached, and the extent of whose freedom was measured by the nature of the customs which the owner of the land allowed. Between king and serf was a hierarchy of lesser and greater lords each owing obligations, of a military, spiritual or labouring kind, to their immediately superior lord. In return for performance of those obligations, the lord granted land; and the obligations attached to land grants determined whether tenure was free or unfree. The characteristic of free tenure was that its obligations were known and not of a servile nature. The characteristic of unfree tenure was that its obligations were not only servile but unknown from day to day. An unfree tenant held land at the will of his lord, and might not quit that land or be free of his obligations without the lord’s consent.
Except for allodial land (which is primarily the ancient possessions of the Crown, the foreshore and the seabed below low water mark extending to the seaward territorial limits) [1] all land in England was held in manors; and every manor had its lord and those dependent on him. The manor was both a territorial unit and a collection of rights over manorial land and resources, and the lordship of a manor included ownership of both. It is dangerous to generalise about medieval manors because they varied greatly both in size and nature, and variation itself could be influenced by region and district. There was no uniform pattern of independent, adjoining landed estates because some manors could be inter-dependent and lands could be inter-mixed. Most manors were agriculturally self-sufficient, but their characteristics depended on location, ownership, and the circumstances in which the manor was created. They also evolved over time in response to famine, plague and war. Not all manors had manor houses because their owner could be an absentee lord; and for those that did, the capital messuage, as the house was described in manorial or title documents, could be a functional building if used by an absentee lord’s staff or, alternatively, it could be more substantial with stables, barns and other outbuildings used for farming purposes.
Most manors had demesne land, which can be thought of as a home farm reserved for the lord. Again, the size of demesnes varied greatly. Demesne land could be arable, pasture, meadow or woodland, and would be worked by the lord’s tenants in return for their own holdings of land (or ‘tenements’). Free tenants, who would pay money rents, had defined, infrequent and comparatively modest tasks. Unfree tenants, or villeins, worked more regularly for the lord and even harder at busy times of the agricultural year. Even here, there was no inevitability that all manors had unfree tenants. Some had very few or none.[2]
The number of manors expanded significantly after 1066 in response to population growth, the development of a cash economy, and the implications of inheritance: landowners created new manors from existing ones to provide for their children. This took place in the context of an active land transfer market. Land could be sold either by substitution, where the purchaser held directly of the vendor’s superior lord, or by sub-infeudation, where the purchaser held of the vendor and owed service to him. Sub-infeudation created difficulty for the Crown and its chief lords if neither the vendor nor the new owners of land had the resources to provide them with the services and payments due for tenurial incidents that the vendor had previously provided. To resolve the problem, the Statute of Quia Emptores was passed in 1289, prohibiting sub-infeudation and permitting only substitution in order to preserve the rights and revenues of lords intact. But the unintended consequence was to prevent the creation of new manors after 1289, and the nexus of tenure based on personal service which had characterised the early medieval manor was slowly dissolved.[3]
1289 to 1660: Villeinage to copyhold and the end of fiscal feudalism
The period from 1289 to the early 17th century saw a variety of social, economic and legal changes which together reduced the number of manors and contributed to their decline as a self-sufficient agricultural unit and instrument of socio-economic control. First, plague from the mid-fourteenth century onwards led to rural depopulation and, for lords, made cash a more valuable commodity than services. Lords needed rents, and although rents could and usually did exist alongside those feudal incidents which provided income to the lord, the commutation from services to rents destroyed the earlier foundation for distinguishing between free and unfree tenure. Second, the need for more business-like management of land led to more systematic keeping of manorial records, particularly in relation to the granting of land. It is important here to be aware of the distinction between meanings of ‘free’ in different contexts. People could be free or unfree depending on their position in the social hierarchy. But land too could be free or unfree according to the tenure on which it was held. From the 14th century onwards, as free men paid for and took grants of what had been unfree land, and unfree men took grants of free land, the distinction between free tenure and villein tenure became irrelevant and disappeared.
Records were made on the rolls of manorial courts, set up by lords to deal with criminal, civil and administrative matters relating to the manor; and tenants were provided with a copy of that part of the roll dealing with their admittance to or surrender of a particular piece of land. With a more active land market and a desire shared by both lord and by tenant for certainty about the terms on which land was held, the practice developed of conveying land with unfree tenures using the words ‘at the will of the lord and in accordance with the custom of the manor’. The first part of this phrase denoted two things: that the lord owned the freehold, and that there was a period of time for which the land could be held by the grantee – i.e. the quantity of his interest, or estate. The estate represented the extent of the grantee’s possession of the land, and it was terminable at the will of the lord.[4] The second part of the phrase, ‘according to the custom of the manor’, denoted the tenure in terms of the custom of the manor. This identified what the grantee could do with the land. However, the will of the lord and the custom of the manor could be in conflict. If a lord had charged an entry fine to a tenant of unfree land who had fulfilled his services, and where the custom of the manor was that land should be held for years or for lives or by inheritance, the lord could not simply evict the tenant at will. The manorial records and court rolls formed precedents and evidence in the royal courts: first in the Chancery and then, from the mid-16th century, in the royal courts of common law. Both came to accept that manorial landholding and custom were the proper subject of their own jurisdiction.[5] In the 1560s the royal courts provided tenants with personal remedies in damages for trespass; and then, in the 1570s, a proprietary remedy for ejectment, where tenants could recover possession of land.[6] Lords could no longer forfeit their tenants’ lands at will.[7]
What emerged in the place of villein tenure was copyhold tenure, so called because the tenant’s right to hold his land was evidenced by a copy he was given of the relevant page from the manorial court roll recording his tenancy. Though still unfree, by the early 17th century copyhold tenure was established as having a status whose rights could be maintained in the courts against infringements by lords. Copyholders could assert these rights both in the customary court of the manor, where the lord or his steward presided, and, if they got no satisfaction there, in the royal courts.
By contrast, the position of free tenure had in some respects become more onerous as the Crown’s need for money focused on maximising income from feudal incidents from those who held of it in capite and by knight service: the aristocracy and gentry. Free tenants had from 1066 held of their lord only for life, with the consequence that on death there were payments by way of relief to be made to the lord before the new tenant could take up the holding. During the 13th century, legislation had limited the amount of relief to be paid, although this did not bind the Crown whose right of primer seisin entitled it on the death of a tenant to take possession of the land for its own profit and retain possession until relief was paid. For those who were tenants in chivalry, there were also the incidents of wardship and marriage. The right of wardship entitled the lord on the death of a tenant to take possession of the land and its profits until the heir was 21.[8] The right of marriage entitled the lord to select a husband for a female ward. Exploitation of these powers was disliked or resented by those on the receiving end, and medieval lawyers developed the concepts of the will and the use to avoid them. Land could not be devised by will to pass to heirs but, because of Quia Emptores, it could be alienated by a grant to feoffees (usually friends, neighbours or lawyers) on trust to re-grant it after the tenant’s death to such beneficiaries as he should name in his will. From around 1400 the Chancery protected the rights of such beneficiaries, which did not exist at common law.[9]
The will and the use together denied the Crown of a lucrative source of income. Henry VIII sought to address this through the Statute of Uses of 1536, the Statute of Wills of 1540 and the establishment of the Court of Wards the same year. These measures together were the principal features of what legal historians have called ‘fiscal feudalism’. The 1536 Statute provided that where A was seised of property to the ‘use, trust or confidence’ of B, then B was to be regarded as seised of the property for all purposes in law and for such estates as he had or would have had in use. The use was therefore executed, and the consequence was that the beneficial owner of land would die seised of it so that his will would be ineffective and the land would be subject to feudal incidents.[10] The statute applied not only to tenants in chivalry but to tenants in knight-service and even tenants in socage.[11]
Creative thinking by lawyers to get round the Statute of Uses spilled over into the law of wills, which were the subject of the 1540 statute. Before it, landowners had been unable to dispose of their freehold by will to someone other than an heir or descendant; this meant that if there was no heir or descendant then the land escheated to the lord who, because of the gradual disappearance of mesne lords since 1289, was normally the Crown. The Crown’s right of escheat was lucrative and, to prevent estate planning from diminishing its value, the Statute of Wills effected a compromise by giving landowners, for the first time, the power to dispose of the freehold to someone other than an heir or descendant. However, the statute required tenants by knight-service to leave at least one third of their land to descend, and this one third remained potentially subject to escheat. At the same time the Crown established the Court of Wards and Liveries to supervise the Crown’s rights to wardships and other feudal incidents, thereby increasing collection of royal revenue. The Court was active for over a century but so disliked that Parliament closed it in 1646. Its existence, and fiscal feudalism with it, ended after the Restoration with the Tenures Abolition Act of 1660.[12] The tenures affected by the Act were those in chief and by knight-service, which henceforth were held in socage. This meant that military service and other incidents owed to the Crown were abolished. Whereas the presumption at common law before the Act had been of a tenure in chief by knight-service, the presumption after it was of tenure in chief by socage.[13] That transformation meant that the aristocracy and gentry joined those who had previously held in socage and were liable to the Crown only for small amounts or for none.
The Tudor legislation enabling fiscal feudalism coincided with the events of the English Reformation and the expropriation by the Crown of lands belonging to monasteries and religious orders. The transfer of land ownership on so large a scale disrupted the constitution and operation of the manors on those lands, and the attempts by Mary through the Crown Lands Act of 1556 to return them to those from whom they had been taken complicated the position still further. After Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s accession in 1558, land transfers made pursuant to the 1556 Act were largely or wholly undone by the Religious Houses Act of 1559. Elizabeth’s reign was notable for a steady flow of decisions by the courts dealing with manorial law which, in the early 17th century, became the subject of Sir Edward Coke’s Compleat Copyholder.
1600 to 1925 and beyond: Enclosure, enfranchisement and reform
From the late 16th to the mid-19th century, and beginning in the central Midlands counties,[14] the predominant feature of manorial development was enclosure.[15] Enclosure involved turning communal lands into private holdings, often in such a way as to create farms and turn them into contiguous units. Open fields of cultivated land gradually disappeared, and commons and wastes were reduced in extent. The process began because landowners wanted to keep more sheep, but it continued because of more general improvements in livestock breeding and the introduction of new crops and crop rotations. Enclosure, it was widely believed, increased agricultural productivity and profit. The new holdings required hedgerows, walls, ditches, ponds and drainage.[16] It has been estimated that well over 20% of the land area of Britain had been enclosed by 1750, a further 21% between 1750 and 1830, and a further 3% by 1914.[17]
Enclosure or ‘approvement’ (as it was originally known) had started in medieval times, and the Crown soon recognised that protection must be given to the interests of those freeholder tenants who depended on common lands. The protection was needed to stop acquisitive lords encroaching on common land for themselves. Legislation was enacted obliging lords to leave enough waste to meet the requirements of their freehold commoners. This was done through the Statute of Merton of 1235, which applied to commons appendant (i.e. to commons where rights of common attached to a corporeal hereditament by operation of law), and the Statute of Westminster II of 1285, which applied to commons appurtenant (i.e. to commons where such rights were attached to a corporeal hereditament by grant or prescription.)[18] For those who were not freeholders but customary tenants, the availability of redress against arbitrary enclosure was in equity through Chancery; and so if lords could not enclose through unity of possession when a tenancy determined, the safest way of achieving enclosure was by way of agreement.[19] The scope and nature of agreements varied according to the extent of land and the number of parties involved. Thus a lord might enclose demesne open field lands and a part of the waste proportionate to the demesne’s rights of common while giving up the demesne’s rights over the rest of the common and preserving the rights of common of other tenants. Such an agreement might involve formal exchanges of land between lord and tenants.[20] A broader agreement, which became typical in the 18th and early 19th centuries, could involve mutual extinction of common rights and the enclosure of common fields and wastes as well as land exchange. This type of agreement was usually arrived at after one or more of the wealthier promoters – who could be, but did not have to be, a lord – had commissioned surveyors as independent experts to report and recommend how the enclosure should proceed with lands allotted for maximising improvement and to mutual advantage. Where such lands were held on different tenures or estates, the commissioners could recommend what tenures and estates should apply following exchange and allotment. Where agreement was achieved, it would usually be drafted by counsel.[21]
The formalities of enclosure were of various kinds. It was always possible to proceed by way of private agreement, but the practice quickly developed of recording the agreement in authoritative form. Where exchange and allotment involved demesne and other manorial lands only, confirmation of the agreement could take place within the manorial court.[22] Later, recourse was had to the royal courts and in particular to Chancery to give the agreement its blessing. The more extensive the lands, the more parties were likely to be involved; and the difficulty of obtaining agreement, which had to be unanimous, and delays in court, made the process a long one. By the mid-18th century, the preferred route was by Private Act of Parliament. This was a process more expensive than court proceedings but provided greater security for those involved and was easier to complete because it required not unanimity but only the consent of the majority of landowners affected.[23] In some cases, parliamentary acts were no more than confirmatory of existing landholdings themselves resulting from earlier agreements.[24]
Parliamentary enclosure began in Leicestershire and Northamptonshire in the 1750s and spread gradually outwards to Cornwall and north-west Wales by the mid-19th century.[25] Counties in the upland areas of England and Wales included extensive wastes and commons, which avoided enclosure until the mid-19th century.[26] Overall, enclosure affected at least 7.62 million acres in England,[27] of which just over half was pasture and waste and 41.3% was open fields. Lords of the manor, tithe-owners (clergy and non-clergy, as well as lords of the manor themselves) and other landowners were the distinct interests involved in an enclosure, and they entrusted their representation to commissioners charged with making the decisions about partition, exchange, allotment and compensation which were the principal features of the enclosure award.[28] The power to appoint commissioners held by lords of the manor and other wealthy landowners offered opportunities for corruption and disregard for the poorest who had no say in the process but were most at risk from its outcome.
The cost and complexity of private Inclosure Act procedure was a source of frequent complaint to government, and in 1801 Parliament approved the Inclosure Consolidation Act.[29] Its long title was ‘an Act for consolidating in one Act certain provisions usually inserted in Acts of Inclosure, and for facilitating the mode of proving the several facts usually required in the passing of such Acts.’ Provisions generally included in a private Inclosure Act would now apply to all enclosures, subject to express provision to the contrary. Acts therefore became shorter and the enclosure process less expensive. The 1801 Act, however, focused on the enclosure of commons and wastes rather than common fields, and not until 1834 did a further act address the exchange and consolidation of holdings in common fields, meadows or pastures.[30] An act facilitating the enclosure of open and arable fields had to wait until 1836.[31] Under the 1836 Inclosure Act, two-thirds in number and value of the possessors of any rights in common fields could nominate commissioners, enclose the common fields and exchange them. The Act did not apply to waste lands or manorial rights, and no common fields could be enclosed under it within ten miles of London. An act of 1840 made the awards of the 1836 Act commissioners final and extended the 1836 Act to Lammas lands[32] – i.e. to commons where commoners could graze their stock after harvest from Lammas Day on 12 August until the following 6 April.[33] The 1836 and 1840 Acts enabled what has been called ‘blanket authorization for enclosure by agreement’,[34] provided the requirements as to land type and supporters were complied with; but the time had come when promoters of enclosure would no longer be able to nominate commissioners.
From the 1830s onwards successive governments legislated increasingly across a range of matters affecting the ownership of manorial land as well as land generally. Although its focus was not specifically on manorial lords, the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 involved the creation of official commissioners to oversee the survey and valuation of land whose owners were required to pay a parish rentcharge.[35] The Enfranchisement of Copyholds Act 1841 was the first of a series of copyhold acts passed in 1843, 1844, 1852, 1858 and 1887, concluding with a consolidating act of 1894.[36] The 1841 Act saw the establishment of the Copyhold Commissioners, who were responsible for administering applications for enfranchisement under the Act them and whose main function was to keep a record of deeds of voluntary enfranchisements. The 1852 Act allowed landlords and tenants to require and compel the extinguishment of copyholds, and the commissioners’ functions expanded with powers to make awards for compulsory enfranchisements.
Drawing on the commissioner models of previous acts, the General Inclosure Act 1845 appointed commissioners who were to examine each enclosure application and, if they accepted it, draw up a scheme containing a provisional order for enactment by Parliament.[37] Orders were to be submitted for approval by Parliament in annual tranches, and between 1845 and 1867 nearly 900 enclosures were dealt with in this way. Inclosure Commissioners were government officials with judicial powers and discretions, and their establishment was an important step towards government intervention and regulation of the enclosure process. They administered the various Inclosure, Conveyancing and Commons Acts, concerning the enclosure of waste and commonable land, exchange of land, and partitions and divisions of intermixed land. As well as making awards and orders, the commissioners arbitrated disputed claims, settled compensation and regulated the use of commons. The Inclosure Act 1851 authorised the appointment of commissioners to perform the functions of all three commissions under the joint title of the Copyhold, Inclosure and Tithe Commission. By the Settled Land Act 1882, this combined Commission was merged into a body of Land Commissioners for England under the Home Office. In 1889, the Land Commissioners’ functions concerning land tenure administration, land use and land improvement, passed to the newly established Board of Agriculture.
The impact of 19th century legislation on the manorial system was steadily to erode its importance within the broader framework of land ownership. The reduction in extent of copyhold tenure owed more to the need of lords to simplify and have cheaper conveyancing and to obtain commercial rents from copyhold land. It had little or nothing to do with any principled wish to liberate copyhold tenants from the remaining shackles of medieval serfdom. Scriven’s Law of Copyholds and Manors, which first appeared in 1823 and established itself as the leading practitioners’ textbook on the subject, was published in its seventh and last edition in 1896. Copyhold tenure was abolished on 1 January 1926, when copyholders became freeholders and there were many instances where the implications of their enfranchisement needed to be worked out. This relied on the availability of manorial documentation. Parliament recognised this in 1924 by introducing a new section into the Law of Property Act 1922, providing by section 144A(1) that ‘All manorial documents shall be under the charge and superintendence of the Master of the Rolls.’[38] Abolition of copyhold tenure brought to a virtual end the role of manorial courts, which had declined steadily in numbers and jurisdiction. However, lordship titles, minerals, commons and wastes all remained in the new legal landscape shaped by the reforms of the 1922-1925 property legislation. The failure of that legislation[39] to require compulsory registration of manorial rights, titles or interests, created a degree of uncertainty about their existence or application in circumstances where the relevant documentation was increasingly hard to find. The Land Registration Act 2002 has addressed that uncertainty but left many issues unresolved.
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[1] R (Parkes) v Dorset County Council [2024] 1 WLR 4337 at [185]
(Holgate J).
[2] Mark Bailey, The English Manor c. 1200-1500 (Manchester, 2002), p.7.
[3] For a more extensive discussion of Quia Emptores, see chapter 8. There is a broad historical overview in Sir Maurice Powicke, The Thirteenth Century (Oxford, 1953), pp.379-80.
[4] C.M. Gray, Copyhold, Equity and the Common Law (Harvard, 1963), pp.8-9.
[5] Gray, pp.34-51, 58-66.
[6] A.W and C. Barsby, Manorial Law (1996), p.38.
[7] Eric Kerridge, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century and After (1969; republished by Routledge in 2006), p.71.
[8] If male. The age was 14 or 16 if female: see Barsby, p.16.
[9] David M. Walker, ‘Statute of Uses 1535’ in The Oxford Companion to Law (Oxford, 1980), p.1185.
[10] J.H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (5th edition, Oxford, 2019), pp.275-276.
[11] Tudor lawyers quickly found ways of avoiding the statute – e.g by the long lease (see the 4th edition of J.H. Baker (2002), pp.256-57, n.46); or by the formula ‘A to use of B to use of C’ (Walker, loc. cit., p.1185).
[12] 12 Car 2 c 24
[13] Baker (4th edition), p.257, n.48.
[14] W.G. Hoskins, Local History in England (3rd edn, 1984), pp.70-74.
[15] The historic spelling was ‘inclosure’, and I have followed the historic spelling when referring to Inclosure Acts.
[16] Kerridge, p.111.
[17] J.V. Beckett, ‘Agriculture’ in the Oxford Companion to British History, edited by John Cannon (Oxford, 1997), p.12; and the same author’s ‘Enclosures’, p.348.
[18] Kerridge, p.94.
[19] Kerridge, pp.94-99.
[20] Kerridge, p.99, citing the decision of Lord Verulam LC in the 1619 case of Cartwright v Drope (Tothill 110). The decision in the selected documents in Kerridge’s book at p.185 is extracted from J. Ritchie, Reports of Cases decided by Francis Bacon in the High Court of Chancery 1617-1621 (1932), pp.183-87.
[21] Kerridge, pp. 103, 117. New tenures of copyhold could not be created by agreement because copyhold was a creature of custom and therefore of fact. However, Parliament was sovereign and, where an Inclosure Act provided for exchange and allotment of lands (as most did), Parliament could alter the status of land from freehold to copyhold within the Act if its promoters required. See Watkins on Copyholds (4th edition, 1825), by Thomas Coventry, vol 1, pp.51-52.
[22] Kerridge, at pp.112-13, cites examples of such agreements from the court rolls of Whaddon manor in 1548 and Bremhill manor in 1578.
[23] Kerridge, pp.112, 117.
[24] Doe v Davidson (1813) 2 M & S 175; 105 ER 348.
[25] Kain, Chapman and Oliver, The Enclosure Maps of England and Wales, 1595-1918 (Cambridge, 2004), pp.16-17.
[26] Hoskins, op cit, p.74.
[27] Kain, Chapman and Oliver, p.26. The breakdown is 7.62 million acres for England and 525,880 acres for Wales.
[28] Kain, Chapman and Oliver, p.30.
[29] 41 Geo III c. 109. This paragraph draws on T.E. Scrutton, Commons and the Common Fields: The History and Policy of the Laws relating to Commons and Enclosures in England (Cambridge, 1887), pp.155-57.
[30] 4 & 5 Will. IV c.30.
[31] 6 &7 Will. IV c. 115.
[32] 3 & 4 Vic. c.31.
[33] 8 & 9 Vic. c. 118. Lammas lands differed from common lands, which were uncultivated wastes to which no severalty rights attached. Lammas lands were commonable lands – i.e. lands held in severalty during a portion of the year but then, after the severalty crop had been removed, were commonable: see G.W. Cooke, The Acts for facilitating the Inclosure of Commons in England and Wales (1864), p.42.
[34] John Chapman, A Guide to Parliamentary Enclosures in Wales (Cardiff, 1992), p.3.
[35] See National Archives catalogue: How to look for records of…Tithes: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/tithes/
[36] 57 & 58 Vic.c.46
[37] 8 & 9 Vic. c. 118.
[38] The new section was added by the Law of Property (Amendment) Act 1924 which was hurriedly passed after the decision in Beaumont v Jeffery [1925] Ch 1 where Lawrence J held that the sale of manorial documents was lawful.
[39] And specifically of the Land Registration Act 1925.