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Recently, when a solicitor was clearing out some old safe storage, a
number of 18-th and 19-th century Manorial Court documents relating to
certain residences in Rowington came to light. These documents no longer
have any legal weight, but contain interesting details of part of this
Warwickshire village in the early Georgian period.
The Manor was effectively the area of local government, owned and
presided over by its Lord. The two Manorial Courts, the Court Baron and
Court Leet, dealt with land transfers and similar administrative
activities within the Manor, as well as with the less serious offences.
Below, are set down four of the earlier documents which were found. The
earliest two, from 1715 and 1721, are reproduced in the original Latin
and in English translation. As all the documents are handwritten with
varying degrees of legibility (the 1721 text being particularly hard to
decipher), errors may remain in the transcription.
As was common practice, many of the words in the latin texts were
written in shortened form. I have expanded some of these, enclosing
omitted letters in curly brackets: {...} .
Click here for some notes on
the documents.
|
Only one document, that for 1721, mentions a Shakespeare (William, Gent) - the others are included for historical interest.
18th April 1715 (English Translation)
31st January 1721 (English Translation) Click here to see the meaning of the manorial terms used in the above documents. |