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Post-Restoration Landownership: The Impact of the Abolition of Wardship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2014

Peter Roebuck
Peter Roebuck*
Affiliation:
New University of Ulster, Coleraine
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Extract

Major emphasis has been placed on the political significance of the final abolition of the Court of Wards and Liveries in 1660. Not only did it remove a substantial source of grievance against the crown but, as part of a wider settlement whereby Charles II surrendered ancient dues in return for revenue granted by parliament, it formed a major signpost on the road from a feudal to a constitutional monarchy. Historians have also stressed the importance of abolition to developments in landownership and agriculture. To Blackstone writing in the eighteenth century, abolition was “a greater acquisition to the civil property of this kingdom than even Magna Carta itself.” A century later G. C. Brodrick felt it “at least possible” that “this great reform” had provided England with “an advantage in agriculture over her foreign rivals which has not yet been fully exhausted.” David Ogg went so far as to suggest that abolition “was possibly the most important single event in the history of English landholding.” While most recently, in analysing the economic causes of the English revolution, Lawrence Stone has argued that “it is surely significant that among those [things[ whch were not [restored in 1660] were feudal tenures.”

It has been suggested that the more substantial landowners benefited in three respects from abolition: fiscally; collectively, in relation to other groups in rural society; and managerially, insofar as the reform increased their capacity to conduct their affairs effectively. Their financial position improved with the disappearance of the feudal exactions associated with wardship to which the majority of them had previously been liable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , Fall 1978 , pp. 67 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1978

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References

1. I am grateful to the New University of Ubter and the Trustee; of the Twenty-Seven Foundation for financing the research on which this article is based; and to G. E. Mingay, S. G. F. Spademan, W. H. Crawford, W. A. Maguire, and A. C. Hepburn for comments on earlier drafts. None of these individuals should be held responsible for the deficiencies of this final version.

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15. The records of the actual proceedings in Chancery (bills, answers, orders, etc.) contain much information relating to the financial aspects of guardianship, and also frequently recite developments prior to minorities. Of the enormous and varied contents of this archive, however, the general accounts offer most to the economic historian. Copies of these crop up in provincial archives and are a more than adequate substitute for original rentals and estate accounts where the latter fail to survive. Within the Chancery archive they are to be found in two quite distinct locations. Firstly, PRO, C 103-116, the Chancery Masters' Exhibits, contain a variety of documents, including accounts, relating to those cases where guardians, unaided by Chancery appointees, discharged their responsibilities. C 117-126, the Chancery Masters' Documents, contain records of the processes whereby the activities of the guardians were subsequently examined by officials of the court. A second, largely neglected group relates to those cases in which Chancery took a more active role. C 101, Chancery Masters' Account Books, contains 6,754 volumes of accounts dating from the early eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries; precise references to these volumes are indexed alphabetically according to the first party in any suit in IND 10702 (i-iv). C 102, Chancery Masters' Miscellaneous Books, provides material relating to the processing of these accounts once they were returned to court. The ill-fated Donegall family, most of whose extensive and debt-encumbered property lay in Ireland, experienced one minority, in the 1750s, when the guardians refused to discharge their onerous duties without the active involvement of court officials. PRO, C 11/192/16; 12/377/19. The resulting volume of accounts is at C 101/4968. These records are aho of value, therefore, to historians of Irish landownership; for where a suit involved real or personal property in both England and Ireland it was apparently heard in the English Court of Chancery. Ainsworth, John, “Some Abstracts of Chancery Suits relating to Ireland,” Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 7th series, IX (1939), 39Google Scholar.

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33. PRO, C 33/399/281; 38/526.

34. University of Hull, Hotham of South Dalton MSS, DDHO/20/26.

35. Hotham of South Dalton MSS, DDHO/15/16.

36. In his will Sir Charles had ordered all “surplus moneys” to be invested in the “public funds.”

37. Hotham of South Dalton MSS, DDHO/15/6, 7, 9, 10.

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42. The list of ninety-three families was compiled from Cockayne, G. E. (ed.), Complete Baronetage 1611-1800 (London, 1900–1909)Google Scholar. Additional genealogical information was derived from Foster, Pedigrees of the County Families of Yorkshire; Clay (ed.), Dugdale's Visitation; and Gibbs, Vicary, Doubleday, H. A., et al (eds.), Complete Peerage (London, 1910–1959)Google Scholar. Wherever necessary and possible, the material drawn from these sources was checked against the information in a variety of family histories and other local studies.

43. Included in this total are minorities which began before but ended after either of the two terminal dates; indeed, this applies to all those listed in the Table as pre-1646. The inclusion of such minorities to some extent distorts the overall figures; on the other hand their exclusion would also have led to distortion.

44. See Clay, J. W., “The Gentry of Yorkshire at the Time of the Civil War,” Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, XXIII (1914–1915), 349Google Scholar. Nine of the sixteen minorities in the pre-1646 category began from 1642 onwards; a tenth followed the execution of the Earl of Strafford in 1641.

45. van Bath, B. H. Slicher, The Agrarian History of Western Europe A.D. 500-1850 (London, 1963), pp. 206–20Google Scholar; Chambers, J. D. and Mingay, G. E., The Agricultural Revolution 1750-1880 (London, 1966), pp. 40–42, 167Google Scholar.

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