Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The rise of the estate steward
- The steward's career
- The whole duty of a steward
- Between lord and tenant
- Returns to London
- The ambassador
- Tending the interest
- The almoner
- Filling the pulpit
- The constable: defending the manor
- The constable: defending the forests
- Exploiting the estate
- The clerk of works
- Master and man
- A note on the manuscript sources
- Index
- Title in the series
The constable: defending the manor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- The rise of the estate steward
- The steward's career
- The whole duty of a steward
- Between lord and tenant
- Returns to London
- The ambassador
- Tending the interest
- The almoner
- Filling the pulpit
- The constable: defending the manor
- The constable: defending the forests
- Exploiting the estate
- The clerk of works
- Master and man
- A note on the manuscript sources
- Index
- Title in the series
Summary
As I should very unwillingly see your privileges lost, so on the other hand be as unwilling to put you upon an unnecessary suit.
Samuel Peers, 1680You all know my master is a peer of this realm, and that the House of Lords is now sitting. If you disturb me in the possession of the Market House or the setting out standings or gathering the toll, I will presently send me up to make oath of it, upon which his lordship will immediately send the sergeant-at-arms to fetch you up to answer it at the bar of the Lords' House.
John Mainewaring to the rebellious tradesmen of Ross-on-Wye, 1693The steward of a seventeenth-century estate was a man perpetually on guard. He occupied the role of ‘constable’, not in the sense of a village constable but in the mediaeval sense of a man set in authority to hold a castle, a fiefdom or a baronial estate on behalf of his lord against all enemies. The era of the later Stuarts was mercifully more peaceful than the age of Simon de Montfort but there was still a constabulary role for the steward to play. The bulk of crime in the English provinces in the seventeenth century consisted of crimes against property, and as the largest and most conspicuous possessors of property the landlords were obvious, and indeed vulnerable, targets.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Stewards, Lords and PeopleThe Estate Steward and his World in Later Stuart England, pp. 186 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992