Lord of the manor

“ There were also certain meadows for supplying hay; and beyond the cultivated land lay the wood and waste of the manor. Portions of arable or meadow land might be found apart from the organization of the remainder; the lord of the manor might have a park, and each householder a garden, but the land of the manor was the open fields, the meadows and the wastes or common. The condition of the inhabitants of such a manor is as complex as its geography. At the head of the society came the lord of Rights of Lord and Tenants. ”

“ The existence of a manor implies a lord of the manor, who exercised authority over all the villagers, owned the home farm, and had certain rights over the rest of the land. How all this came about, we scarcely know. Owing to the Danish invasions, when the rude barbarous warriors carried fire and sword into many a peaceful town and village, the villagers found themselves at the mercy of these savage hordes. Probably they sought the protection of some thane, or eorl, with his band of warriors, who could save their lands from pillage. ”

“ The lord of the manor, who had been severely wounded in so tender a part, was for setting forth without a moment’s delay, as so much of the day was left, that before the appearance of night they might reach the hut of Black Mads. But the gracious lady, in whose revenge a surer plan and maturer consideration were always manifest, represented to her impetuous mate, that the darkness would also favour the culprit’s flight ”

“ This endowment was in ancient times commonly made by an allotment of manse and glebe, by the lord of the manor, who thereupon became the patron of the church. Other persons also at the time of consecration often contributed small portions of ground, which is the reason, we are told, why, in England, in many parishes, the glebe is not only distant from the manor, but lies in remote, divided, parceis, Ken. ”

“ The market rights were purchased by the town in 1880 from the trustees of Thomas Cradock, late lord of the manor. Edward II. visited the manor several times when it belonged to his favourite, Hugh Despenser the elder. ”

“ The lord of the manor has a right, by ancient custom, to bear a hawk about his arms agreeable to the print: it arose from the following circumstance. When Charles the First held his parliament at Oxford, the then lord of Stoke Lyne was particularly useful to the king in his unfortunate situation, and rendered him service. To reward him he offered him knighthood, which he declined, and merely requested the king’s permission to bear behind his coat of arms a hawk, which his majesty instantly granted. The present lord of the manor is Mr. ”

“ The possession of a manor carries the possession of cultivators with it. It is always important to decide whether a bondman is in the seisin of his lord or not, and the chief means to show it is to trace his connexion with the territorial lordship. The interposition of the manor in the relation between master and man is, of course, a striking feature and it gives a very characteristic turn to medieval servitude. But if it is not consistent with the general theory laid down in the thirteenth century law books, it does not lead to anything like the Roman colonatus. ”

“ But he lived only four years after his father’s death, dying without male issue, and thus passed away forever the last male bearing the name and title, “Augustine Herrman, lord of Bohemia Manor”. [16] The daughter of the fifth lord, Mary, married John Lawson whose descendants married into the Bassett family. Another daughter, Catherine, married Peter Bouchelle by whom she had a daughter, Mary, who married Captain Joseph Ensor of Baltimore County. Mary Ensor’s first son was named Augustine Herrman Ensor, born in 1761 and acknowledged as lord of the Manor. ”

“ Founded partly on express grants of franchises, partly on the inherent right of a feudal lord to hold a court for his free tenants, partly on the obscure community traceable among the unfree inhabitants of the manor, it is incapable of strict legal definition. ”

“ The inhabitants of a manor, or the estate of a lord, were: (1) the lord himself, or his representative, who held his estate on condition of furnishing the King a certain number of armed men (SS113, 150) ; (2) the lord's personal followers, who lived with him, and usually a parish priest or a number of monks; (3) the farm laborers, or villeins, bound to the soil, who could not leave the manor, were not subject to military duty, and who paid rent in labor or produce; there might also be a few actual slaves, but this last class gradually rose to the partial freedom of villenage ”

“ Among other possessions he held the lordship of a Manor close by his residence; it was, however, but a barren dignity, as the Manor was all common and waste land. However, he got an act of Parliament for enclosing the waste lands, and inserted a clause reserving all Mines to himself, should there prove to be any. Well, in time this Manor became built over. Many working men out of their savings put up houses for themselves, and the place became very populous. The old lord died ”

“ Also it happens from time to time that the people of one manor have to perform some services in another, for instance, because they use pasture in that other manor [616] . Such 'forinsec' labour may be due even from tenants of a strange lord. By the side of purely agricultural duties we find such as are required by the political or judicial organisation of the manor. Peasants are bound to guard and hang thieves, to carry summonses and orders, to serve at the courts of the superior lord and of the king [617] . ”

“ William Tindal, in his History of Evesham, 1794, records the fact that in 1790 Aldington belonged to Lord Foley, but history is silent as to local events from that date until modern times, when, in the first half of the next century, the Manor became the property of an ancestor of the present owner. There is a tradition that the Manor House was a small but beautiful old building, with a high-pitched stone-slate roof and three gables in line at the front ”

“ But the villeins were not without their own officer, the provost or reeve. His duty was to arrange the distribution of the services due from the tenants, and, as their representative, to assist the bailiff in the management of the manor. Sometimes the same man appears to have united both offices, and we find the reeve accounting to the lord for the issues of the manor. ”

“ XXI. Every lord of a manor, within his manor, shall have all the powers, jurisdictions, and privileges, which a landgrave or cassique have in his baronies.
XXII. In every signiory, barony, and manor, all the leet-men shall be under the jurisdiction of the respective lords of the said signiory, barony, or manor without appeal from him. Nor shall any leet-man, or leet-woman, have liberty to go off from the land of their particular lord, and live any where else, without licence obtained from their said lord, under hand and seal. ”

“ It was customary, in some places, to drive the cow in the procession of the funeral cortége to the place of sepulture. Mr. E. Baines, speaking of the manor of Ashton-under-Lyne, says:—"The [183] obnoxious feudal heriot, consisting of the best beast on the farm, required to be given to the lord, on the death of the farmer, was a cruel and unmanly exaction, in illustration of which there are many traditionary stories in the manor of Ashton, and no doubt in other manors. ”

“ The manor was known as that of Tor or Torre, and the earliest direct reference to it is found in Domesday. At the time of the Conquest it was bestowed by William of Normandy upon one Richard de Brewire or Brewer, whose descendant, William, Lord Brewer, in 1195, bestowed a portion of the manor on the Church, and founded the monastery afterwards211 to become famous, and known as Tor Abbey, the ruins of which, set amid fine avenues of elms, chestnut, and limes, look out over the green and gently sloping fields once forming the Abbey grounds, and lead down to the seashore. ”

“ In the former his place of abode is a castle, château, derived from castellum, schloss, from schliesen, a place into which the lord might lock himself in and from whence lock out all enemies. But the English terms—mansion, manor-house, hall, court, imply nothing military, give token of no exclusiveness, make no threat. The chronic warfare and petty disturbances that prevailed on the continent of Europe obliged the lords of the soil to perch their residences on inaccessible and barren rocks, whereas in England they are seated comfortably in valleys, in the midst of the richest land. ”

“ To Herrman, life was one long series of adventures, noble and honorable. By birth and education Herrman was an aristocrat in the best meaning of the word and ever remained one both as a merchant and trader of New Amsterdam and later as lord of Bohemia Manor. ”

“ It is to be regretted that the contemporary data regarding the social life of Bohemia Manor during the seventeenth century is so scant; but we can assume with greater or less degree of certainty that the old manor house during its most brilliant career was among the most notable country places in the English colonies. It most certainly was the center of the social life of Cecil County and on many occasions did the presence of the lords of Baltimore grace its assemblies. ”

“ All around the manor house lay small farms with their tenants and servants. But farther back the land was left uncultivated with its native virgin timber. In 1681 Herrman wrote to Lord Baltimore complaining that one George Browning and George Holland had privately surveyed fourteen hundred acres of his “Middle Neck” land. The noble Bohemian did not hesitate to describe them in good plebeian terms as “a couple of damned rascals”. There was in fact much of the virgin forest left when Herrman took up his residence in Cecil County and he took much pride in his stately avenues of primeval trees. ”

“ Before the publication of the early colonial records of the American Atlantic states, the seventeenth century was the dark age of American history. It was an age of half-legendary heroes about whom tradition and family hearsay wove many a fanciful and highly colored tale. And there were few men living in those times about whom legend has woven more fancy than Augustine Herrman ”

“ You’d have a gibbet if you could, wouldn’t you? You with your rebellion and your tin-pot honours! A puling baby could conspire as well as you. And all the world laughing at you—v’là!"
"Get out of this room and take your feet from my manor, Tardif," said the Seigneur with a deadly quietness, "or it will be the worse for you."
"Your Manor—pish!" The man laughed a hateful laugh. "Your manor? You haven’t any manor. You haven’t anything but what you carry on your back." ”

“ The tract of land which the Labadists bought consisted of some thirty-seven hundred acres, comprising land east of Bohemia Manor proper, of the highest fertility. [18] Here the hundred-odd Labadist emigrants from Holland settled, raising grain and tobacco, which plant they no longer detested since it was bringing in a fat income. The future of the Labadist movement in America was closely connected with the fortunes of the House of Herrman. Sluyter was installed as head of the sect and his wife became a kind of mother superior. ”

“ But the Labadists with their peculiar religious and social beliefs and sharp tongues will always be remembered in America because many of the most prominent families of northeast Maryland and Delaware trace their ancestry back to the original settlers of the colony at Bohemia Manor. ”

“ The best account of these families and their descendants so far written is to be found in Charles Payson Mallery’s “Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor”, published by the Historical Society of
Gravestone of Augustine Herrman, Bohemia Manor, Cecil County, Maryland Delaware (No. VII, 1888) , a work to which we have frequently referred.
Bohemia Manor as a great manorial estate has long passed out of existence, and for a long time out of even the minds of all except those who lived in its immediate vicinity. ”

“ The third and youngest daughter of Augustine Herrman, Francina, was born March 12, 1662 in New Amsterdam, just a few months before the family was united at the Manor for the first time. She lived for a time in Holland, but returned to Maryland where she married Joseph Wood. She had a long line of descendants but her share of “The Three Bohemia Sisters” has long since passed out of the family. We have but one other person intimately connected with Augustine Herrman’s life, and her descendants to discuss. ”

“ Perhaps the outstanding attribute of Augustine Herrman’s personality was his normal and rational attitude toward life in general. In an age torn on the one hand by religious persecution and fanaticism and on the other by material greed, he was among the few of the seventeenth century Americans who stand out and above the petty trivialities that troubled men’s minds. ”

“ The reason for the destruction of the recorded will has never been satisfactorily determined. ↑ Johnston, Hist. Cecil Co. p. 107. ↑ Johnston, Hist. Cecil Co. p. 107. ↑ Valentine’s Manual of N. Y. (1863) . p. 773. ↑ Ibid. Date of baptism. ↑ Mallery, C. P. Ancient families of Bohemia Manor, p. 20. ↑ Ibid. Also Md. Arch. Proc. of Gen. Assembly, from 1700–1706. ↑ Mallery, C. P. Ancient Families of Bohemia Manor, p. 22. ↑ Ibid. ↑ Ibid. ↑ Ibid. See also Landrum’s Rise of Methodism in America. ↑ Mallery, C. P. Ancient families of Bohemia Manor, p. 25. ”