Whose was the Fifteenth-century Manor Court?

Abstract As part of a wider literature challenging the notion that many lords engaged in extensive surplus extraction, a recent study focused on inland Flanders has argued that we need to decouple seigneuries , the institutions which structured lordship on the ground, from the exercise of lords’ power. It argues that seigneuries were instead characterised by “middle-class lordship”, being used by tenants to preserve an economic status quo that prevented capitalist development. This article explores these ideas using the case study of fifteenth-century East Anglia. It examines the operation of lord’s manor courts, quantifying their activities for two cross-sections in c.1400 and c.1500. It finds that courts remained important for the objectives of lords across the fifteenth century, but that these aimed to preserve courts as a forum for landholding, rather than to generate arbitrary rents. However, it also finds that while peasants did use courts for collective and individual purposes, this was in decline across the 15 th century, suggesting that the role of courts in providing an institutional framework for economic activity in East Anglia was waning in contrast with their counterparts in inland Flanders. This helps explain why these two regions followed different economic trajectories in the long run.