A lord of the manor, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, is the landholder of a rural estate. The titles date to the English feudal (specifically baronial) system. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seignory, the right to grant or draw benefit from the estate (for example, as a landlord). The title is not a peerage or title of upper nobility (although the holder could also be a peer) but was a relationship to land and how it could be used and those living on the land (tenants or serfs) may be deployed, and the broad estate and its inhabitants administered. The title continues in modern England and Wales as a legally recognised form of property that can be held independently of its historical rights. It may belong entirely to one person or be a moiety shared with other people. The title is known as in Welsh.
In Scotland, the equivalent title to a Lord of the Manor is Laird, though it carries no formal status in law. Some sources, such as the Manorial Society, mistakenly claim that Scottish baronies are equivalent to English Lords of the Manor, asserting that "Scottish Baronies are essentially what in England are called 'manors', but are called 'baronies'." However, this is incorrect. Scottish barons held a noble rank and title of honour granted by the King through a crown charter, conferring pre-eminences, precedence, and privileges, including a seat in the Scottish Parliament as part of the ancient Three Estates until the Union of 1707. Although after 1587, lesser barons could alternatively be represented by shire commissioners; however, when attending Parliament in person, they were classed among the nobility of the Second Estate. Today, baronage titles retain legal status as personal dignities and grant heraldic rights. In contrast, Lords of the Manor were not titles granted by the King and did not constitute a noble rank, but were rather a style applied to the owners of estates. Therefore, whilst Scottish barons held a recognised noble status with parliamentary privileges historically, and maintain certain rights today, Lords of the Manor did not possess noble rank or parliamentary rights.
In the British Crown Dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey the equivalent title is Seigneur.
A similar concept of such a lordship is known in French as Sieur or , in German, (Kaleagasi) in Turkish, in Norwegian and Swedish, in Dutch, and or in Italian.
Background
The manor formed the basic unit of land ownership within the baronial system. Initially in England the feudal "baronial" system considered all those who held land directly from the king by knight-service, from earls downwards, as "barons". Others forms of land tenure under the feudal system included serjeanty (a form of tenure in return for a specified duty other than standard knight-service) and socage (payment of a fee). Under King Henry II, the already distinguished between greater barons (who held their baronies per baroniam by knight-service), and lesser barons (who owned the manor without knight-service). As they held their title due to ownership of manors, and not per baroniam knights service, lords of the manor were in the group of lesser barons. The entitlement or "title" to attend the King's Council in Parliament began to be granted exclusively by decree in the form of a writ of summons from 1265 entrenching the status of the Greater Barons and effectively founding the House of Lords.
Magna Carta (which had been first issued in 1215) had declared that "No free man shall be seized, imprisoned, dispossessed, outlawed, exiled or ruined in any way, nor in any way proceeded against, except by the lawful judgement of his peers", and thus this body of greater barons with a right to attend Parliament were deemed to be "peers" of one another, and it became the norm to refer to these magnates collectively as the "peerage" during the reign of Edward II. Meanwhile the holders of smaller fiefdoms per baroniam ceased to be summoned to parliament, and instead lesser barons of each county would receive a single summons as a group through the sheriff, and representatives from their number would be elected to attend on behalf of the group (this would later evolve into the House of Commons). This meant the official political importance of ownership of manors declined, eventually resulting in baronial status becoming a "personal" title rather than one linked to ownership of territory. The lesser baronial titles, including lordships of the manor, therefore were not incorporated into the peerage. It is understood that all English Feudal Baronies that were not lordships of the manor and had not been upgraded into a peerage, were abolished by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660 (12 Cha. 2. c. 24), passed after the Restoration, which took away knight-service and other legal rights. This left lordships of the manor as the sole vestige of the English feudal system. Like their English counterparts, by 1600 manorial titles in the formerly Norman territories in France and Italy did not ennoble their holders in the same way as did, for example, a barony in these territories.
Lordships of the manor often have certain feudal era rights associated with them. The exact rights that each manor holds will be different: the right to hold a market, a right over certain waterways or mineral deposits are all within scope.
Types
Historically a lord of the manor could either be a tenant-in-chief if he held a capital manor directly from the Crown, or a mesne lord if he was the vassal of another lord. The origins of the lordship of manors arose in the Anglo-Saxon system of manorialism. Following the Norman Conquest, land at the manorial level was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 (the Normans' registry in Sicily was called, in Latin, the Catalogus Baronum, compiled a few years later). The title cannot nowadays be subdivided. This has been prohibited since 1290 by the statute of Quia Emptores that prevents tenants from alienating their lands to others by subinfeudation, instead requiring all tenants wishing to alienate their land to do so by substitution.
Lord Denning, in Corpus Christi College Oxford v Gloucestershire County Council QB 360, described the manor thus:
Tenancy
In England in the Middle Ages, land was held on behalf of the English monarch or ruler by a powerful local supporter, who gave protection in return. The people who had sworn homage to the lord were known as vassals. Vassals were nobles who served loyalty for the king, in return for being given the use of land. After the Norman conquest of England, however, all land in England was owned by the monarch who then granted the use of it by means of a transaction known as enfeoffment, to earls, barons, and others, in return for military service. The person who held feudal land directly from the king was known as a tenant-in-chief (see also Land tenure).
Sub-tenancy
Military service was based upon units of ten knights (see knight-service). An important tenant-in-chief might be expected to provide all ten knights, and lesser tenants-in-chief, half of one unit, i.e., five knights instead of ten. Some tenants-in-chief "sub-infeuded", that is, granted, some land to a sub-tenant. Further sub-infeudation could occur down to the level of a lord of a single manor, which in itself might represent only a fraction of a knight's fee. A mesne lord was the level of lord in the middle holding several manors, between the lords of a manor and the superior lord. The sub-tenant might have to provide knight-service, or finance just a portion of it, or pay something purely nominal. Any further sub-infeudation was prohibited by the statute of in 1290. Knight-service was abolished by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660.
Manorial courts
Manors were defined as an area of land and became closely associated to the advowson of the church; often by default the advowson was appended to the rights of the manor, sometimes separated into moieties.A digest of the laws of England respecting real property, Volume 5 page 3 item 8Lord and peasant in nineteenth century Britain, London : Croom Helm; Totowa, N. J. : Rowman and Littlefield, 1980. Chapter 1 from page 15 & 16 Many lords of the manor were known as squires, at a time when land ownership was the basis of power. While some inhabitants were serfs who were bound to the land, others were freeholders, often known as franklins, who were free from customary services. Periodically all the tenants met at a 'manorial court', with the lord of the manor (or squire), or a steward, as chairman. These courts, known as courts baron, dealt with the tenants' rights and duties, changes of occupancy, and disputes between tenants. Some manorial courts also had the status of a court leet, and so they elected constables and other officials and were effectively a magistrates' courts for minor offences.
Later history The tenure of the freeholders was protected by the royal courts. After the Black Death, labour was in demand and so it became difficult for the lords of manors to impose duties on serfs. However their customary tenure continued and in the 16th century the royal courts also began to protect these customary tenants, who became known as copyholders. The name arises because the tenant was given a copy of the court's record of the fact as a title deed.
During the 19th century, traditional manor courts were phased out. This was largely because by the mid 17th century, large English cities had leading residents such as John Harrison (died 1656) of Leeds, who saw the possession of the manor by only one resident as "giving him too great a superiority over his fellow townsmen, and exposing him to considerable odium". Thus, the Manor of Leeds was divided between several people (shares). This situation could create legal problems. In January 1872, as a group, the "lords of the manor of Leeds" applied to the law courts to ascertain if they could "exercise acts of ownership" over land at a time when manorial rights were being sold to larger city corporations. In 1854, the lords of the manor of Leeds had "sold" these acts of ownership to the Corporation of Leeds, which was the town council for Leeds. Other town corporations bought their manorial titles in the 19th century, including Manchester, where the corporation paid £200,000 for the title in 1846.'Townships: Manchester (part 2 of 2)', in A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, ed. William Farrer and J Brownbill (London, 1911), pp. 230-251. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol4/pp230-251 [accessed 5 December 2023].
By 1925, copyhold tenure had formally ended with the enactment of Law of Property Acts, Law of Property Act 1922 and Law of Property (Amendment) Act 1924, converting copyhold to fee simple. Although copyhold was abolished, the title of 'lord of the manor' remains, and certain rights attached to it will also remain if they are registered under the Land Registration Act 2002. This act ended manorial incidents unprotected by registration at the Land Registry after October 2013. The Land Registration Act 2002 does not affect the existence of unregistered lordships after October 2013, only the rights that would have previously been attached to the same.
During the latter part of the 20th century, many of these titles were sold to wealthy individuals seeking a distinction. However, certain purchasers, such as Mark Roberts, controversially exploited the right to claim unregistered land.Hansard, 3 February 2004 : Column 204WH, 3 February 2004 : Column 205WH A manorial title (i.e. 'lord of the manor') is not a title of nobility, as in a peerage title.
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