Custumal facts for kids

A custumal was a special document from medieval England. Think of it like a rulebook or a record book for a manor (a large estate) or a town. It listed all the important economic, political, and social rules and traditions.

These documents often included:

• A list of local customs.
• Information about farming, trading, and money activities.
• Local laws that everyone had to follow.

A custumal could be written for just one manor or for a whole county!

Manorial Custumals

Manorial custumals were about life on a manor. The National Archives describes them as an early type of survey. They listed the manor's tenants and the rules for their homes and lands.

These documents were usually written in Latin or Anglo-French. Sometimes, they even mixed different languages. They often started with a common French phrase: "These are the usages and customs of..."

Custumals came in two main types:

• The most common type was a list of the manor's customs. It summarized daily activities like farming, trading, and finances. It also included local laws and agreements between the landlord and tenants.
• A less common type was a survey. This listed the rents and services that each tenant on the manor owed.

Custumals could cover different areas. Some were for a single manor, like the Custumal of the Manor of Cockerham from 1326–1327. Others covered several manors under one control, such as the Custumal of Battle Abbey during the reign of Edward I.

A famous example is the Custumal of Kent. It was written in Anglo-French in 1293. This document explained the unique system of gavelkind in Kent. This system was a special way of inheriting land that had existed for centuries. The Custumal of Kent was copied many times by scribes. Later, it was even printed by people like Richard Tottel in 1536.

Custumals from large church estates often had their own ways of ranking tenants. The Custumal of Battle Abbey used four main groups:

• Freeholders (called liberi tenentes in Latin): These were free tenants who held land without many restrictions.
• Villeins (villani or custumarii): These were customary tenants. They had to follow certain customs but were not completely tied to the land.
• Cottars or cottagers (cottarii): These were subtenants. They usually held small plots of land, often about four acres.
• Subcottars (coterelli or cotteria): These were very small landholders, sometimes with just one or two acres. Some were even landless.

Historians find custumals very useful. They give us a great look into daily life on a medieval estate. For example, the Custumals of the Manor of Cockerham (1326–1327) described how people used resources. This included peat for fuel, salt, sheep, goats, horses, cattle, and even mussels from the shoreline. It also had rules to protect property. For instance, tenants had to "maintain the dikes of the mill pond so that the pond does not burst."

Borough Custumals

Borough custumals were like rulebooks for towns. In the Middle Ages, managing a town often involved legal matters. So, the custumal and the court roll were the main records for a medieval town's government.

Collections of customary law for English towns started appearing as early as the late 1100s. Some of the oldest surviving ones are for the towns of Ipswich and Exeter. These custumals had a very practical purpose. They helped guide and teach future town officials how to keep law and order.

Town clerks and scribes were responsible for these records. They had to preserve the local customs. But they also had to update and add to them as the town's needs changed. Because of this, many custumals we have today are copies or updated versions, not the very first originals.

Studying town customs became popular in the early 1900s. Historians and people interested in old things wanted to understand how English law began. Mary Bateson wrote a very important work on town law called Borough Customs. It was published in two volumes in 1904 and 1906.

Borough custumals often focused on the rights of burgesses. These were the men who were official citizens of the town. They also regulated economic practices. But these documents also show bigger social concerns about how the town was governed. The customs of the town of Maldon in Essex are a good example. They show how political, social, and economic concerns could change over time.