Sussex at Law in the Westminster ‘Equity’ Courts (1500 -1650)
Mike Kipling
Kellogg College, University of Oxford
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree
of Master of Science in English Local History
27 September 2021
i
Contents
Page
1. Introduction
1.1 History and process of the courts
1.2 Early modern Sussex
1.3 Property and debt as causes for equity actions.
1
4
5
2. Historiography
7
3. Data Sources and Methodology
3.1 Data Sources
3.2 Methodology
3.3 Reliability of data sources
13
14
15
4. Results
4.1. Chancery
4.1.1. Analysis of catalogue descriptions of Sussex cases
4.1.2. Discussion of land cases
4.1.3. Discussion of financial cases
16
21
24
4.2. Requests
4.2.1. Analysis of catalogue descriptions of Sussex cases
4.2.2. Discussion of land cases
4.2.3. Discussion of financial cases
25
27
28
4.3. Star Chamber - Analysis of catalogue descriptions and discussion of Sussex cases
4.3.1 STAC 1-4 (1499-1558)
30
4.2.2 STAC 5 (1559-1603)
33
4.3.3 STAC 8 (1602-40)
35
4.4. Exchequer
4.4.1. Analysis of catalogue descriptions of Sussex cases
4.4.2. Discussion of cases
37
39
5. Conclusions
41
Appendix 1
43
List of Figures and Tables
44
Bibliography
46
ii
Abstract
The four Westminster courts of Chancery, Requests, Star Chamber and Exchequer were
active during much or all of the period 1500-1650. This dissertation considers those cases
before them associated with the county of Sussex which were commenced by the submission
of a bill in English and where verdicts were reached mainly or exclusively on principles of
equity rather than common law. Digital indices of court documents produced by the National
Archives and the Anglo-American Legal Tradition (AALT) have been interrogated for details
of Sussex cases, which have then been categorised by subject matter. The gender and social
status of litigants and their geographical dispersion across the county have also been
considered where the data permits. Digital images of documents at AALT (and some physical
documents to the extent that access to archives during the Covid-19 pandemic was possible)
have also been examined.
It is demonstrated that the inhabitants of Sussex appeared at the four courts in broadly the
same proportion as did the country as a whole and for broadly the same main purposes,
namely the resolution of disputes over land and debt which could not, at least in the
complainants’ opinions, be resolved fairly at local level or the national common law courts.
Over time, there were some shifts in the matters brought to the courts, including a greater
preponderance of debt cases. Historiography from R. H. Tawney onwards could be read as
implying that the courts frequently addressed unfairness between landlords and groups of
their tenants. However, certainly in Sussex, the great majority of land cases were individual
disputes, frequently intra-familial. Relatively few cases addressed enclosure, engrossing or
customs of a manor. Debt and other financial cases provide interesting insight into the
manifestation of Muldrew’s ’culture of credit’ in the county, and into the county’s main areas
of economic activity: agriculture, iron founding and shipping. Opportunities for further
research are highlighted, including consideration of the uncatalogued half of Requests
pleadings, and Sussex credit and trade practices as revealed by cases in Exchequer.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr Heather Falvey, my supervisor, for her prompt and most helpful
guidance throughout my research and writing, and Dr Jonathan Healey for his teaching and
encouragement over the past three years. Also, for sharing their data or unpublished work
with me, I am very grateful to Professor Louis Knafla of Calgary, Dr Laura Flannigan of
Oxford and Dr Amanda Bevan of The National Archives. Most of all, though, I am grateful
to those many anonymous researchers and technicians who have constructed and digitised the
catalogues and wikis, and imaged so many documents, enabling me to carry out my research
during these unprecedented times.
List of Abbreviations
AALT Anglo-American Legal Tradition, University of Houston, Texas,
AALT Home Page (uh.edu)
KAL Louis Knafla, Kent at Law 1602, Volumes I-VI, Lists and Index Society, Special
Series 44-6, 51-53, 56 (2009-16). Vol VII, ‘Exchequer Equity’ (2021, unpublished
draft provided by the author).
TNA The National Archives, Kew, London
VCH Victoria County History of Sussex, Volumes 1-9.
Waalt Wiki AALT, University of Houston, Texas, Waalt (uh.edu).
iii
1. Introduction
According to John Randoll, husbandman, of Hamsey (Sussex), on 29 December 1546, John
Erle of Lewes, shoemaker, and Henry Fytzherbert of Ringmer, gentleman, along with ten
others went to a ‘certain water’ of Randoll’s called ‘the Wasshing place’ and ‘riotously’ took
up nets he had there. Randoll made this accusation in a bill to the court of Chancery,
presumably seeking the return of his fishing equipment. Erle and Fytzherbert answered that
the Archbishop of Canterbury’s manor of South Malling enjoyed half (this would be the east
side) of the waters of the ‘River of Lewys’ (i.e. the Ouse), including the fishing, from
Barcombe bay (a ‘bay’ was a mill pond) to Wyborns stake, and that the Barony of Lewes
enjoyed the other half (the west side) from Barcombe bay to the sea. Sir John Gage, knight,
had a lease to these rights and, as his servants, Erle and Fytzherbert had distrained Randoll’s
nets as ‘damage fesant’. Witnesses were then examined on behalf of all the parties. However,
the court on 14 June 1547 dismissed the case until Randoll could provide better proof of his
rights; meanwhile he was fined £10 for ‘vexation’.1 This case related to a dispute over land
rights, as did the majority of Sussex cases before Chancery and the other Westminster courts
of Requests, Star Chamber and Exchequer.
This dissertation covers three aspects of the use of these four courts. Firstly, it provides an
overview of the matters about which the inhabitants of early modern Sussex needed to seek
an equitable resolution at the heart of justice, and (to the extent that the data permits) the
gender and social status of those who used the courts. Secondly, it identifies and discusses
those aspects of real property ownership or tenancy that were most commonly contested.
Thirdly, as another common type of action brought before the equity courts related to
financial matters, mainly debt, it also identifies and discusses the matters which gave rise to
these cases. Findings are set against the background, local and national, of access to and use
of the law, and of social phenomena during the period in question, such as the ‘agrarian
problem’ first identified by Tawney and Muldrew’s ‘culture of credit’, enabling conclusions
about behaviours and practices in Sussex to add to the scholarship on these matters. 2 A
platform for further research is also established.
For consistency, my research has largely been limited to a period coinciding with the
existence of the two shorter-lived courts, Requests and Star Chamber. Also, due to restricted
access to physical archives during the Covid-19 pandemic, the sources used have mainly been
digitised indices and catalogues, imaged original documents, and published transcriptions.
Dating assumes the year commenced on 1 January.
1.1 History and Process of the Courts
The national common law courts of King’s/Queen’s Bench and Common Pleas were at this
time significantly constrained by the rigidity of the framework in which they operated. This
could lead to blatant injustices, such as a debtor who had failed to make sure his bond was
cancelled when he made repayment being required to pay the debt again. Equity courts were
not so constrained and could consider all the facts of a case.3 Cases concerning property
TNA C 78/4/50 Randoll v Erie (sic). ‘Damage fesant’ was a common law remedy to distrain chattels found on
land as security for compensation for damage caused by them.
2
R. H. Tawney, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912; Harper Torchbook edition, 1967); Craig
Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation (Basingstoke, 1998), pp. 121-96.
3
Sir John Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (5th edition, Oxford, 2019), pp. 110-11.
1
1
rights were also significantly constrained, as common law courts were limited in their ability
to take into account customary practice or the obligations of trustees. The residents of early
modern Sussex had access to local courts, common law and ecclesiastical, which would
nevertheless have dealt with the vast majority of complaints. Knafla, for example, identifies
56 Kent cases in Chancery, 37 in Star Chamber and 43 in Requests with process in 1602,
compared with almost 4,500 before borough and liberty courts and 229 before just 16 of the
many manor courts in the county.4 Sussex’s experience is likely to have been broadly similar.
For example, in 1606 around 400 Sussex cases are likely to have gone annually to Common
Pleas with maybe a further 160 to King’s Bench.5 Unfavourable verdicts from these local and
national courts were sometimes taken to the equity courts in the hope of a better outcome. An
example of this is when, in 1596, Chancery ruled that a verdict of the manor court of
Petworth was ‘corrupt and unlawful’ and of ‘no credit’. It was successfully alleged that the
manor jury were ‘verie simple men and of verie meane capacite’ and were swayed against the
evidence by gifts of ‘beare, figges, almonds and apples’. Possession of the tenement in
question was awarded to the plaintiff and all action in common law stayed.6
The earliest of the four courts was that of Chancery. A court of Chancery emerged in the
fourteenth century, when its function was one of addressing challenges to the administrative
work of the lord chancellor, especially inquisitions post mortem. This was a common law
jurisdiction where work was conducted in Latin. From the middle of the fourteenth century,
petitions addressed to the monarch on a range of matters, unless important enough for
parliament, were dealt with either by the Council or by individual councillors such as the
chancellor or the lord high admiral, who dealt with them in their own courts. Over time, bills
began to be referred directly to the chancellor complaining of inability to get a fair outcome
in common law on a matter. As they were written in the vernacular, this side of the court’s
work became known as the ‘English side’ to distinguish it from the common-law processes
on the ‘Latin side’. A bill seeking a remedy in equity was therefore known as an English bill. 7
The earliest surviving English bills date to the reign of Richard II, and many thousands
remain from the fifteenth century.8
Star Chamber and Requests both developed processes to deal with petitions to the king or the
Council. Star Chamber emerged as an entity distinct from the Council during Henry VIII’s
reign, with separate records being kept from 1540. Earlier, Wolsey had dramatically
expanded the Council’s civil jurisdiction. Much of its business was really about title, albeit
with an often exaggerated or fictional allegation of violence to bring the case within the
jurisdiction of the Council/Chamber. Other frequent cases were about fraud and perversions
of the course of justice. Star Chamber was not technically an equity court, since it dealt with
cases which could have been dealt with at common law, especially those having a criminal
element. It was also able to impose a wide range of punishments, including corporal
punishment, although excluding the death penalty. Nevertheless, its process mirrored that of
the other three courts and so has been included in this study. In the seventeenth century, and
particularly during Charles I’s ‘personal rule’, Star Chamber became known as a court where
political opponents of the government could be tried without the need to convince a jury
4
Knafla, KAL.
Christopher Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth (Cambridge, 1986), Tables 4.4 and 4.5,
(assuming that Sussex had the average number per county).
6
TNA C 78/140/6, Lutter v Teeling
7
Henry Horwitz, Chancery Records and Proceedings 1600-1800 (London, 1995), p. 1; Baker, An Introduction
to English Legal History, pp. 105-8.
8
AALT, Chancery Proceedings, accessed on 11 May 2021 at ChancPro (uh.edu)
5
2
potentially in sympathy with the defendant. Largely as a consequence, it was disbanded by
the Long Parliament in 1641.9
The Court of Requests resulted from the Council’s practice of referring some petitions to
smaller groups of its members. In 1483 a clerk was appointed to deal with the supplications
of poor persons, although the hearings generally continued to be held before those attending
the king wherever he happened to be in the country, or occasionally overseas. In 1519,
Wolsey established Requests as a permanent entity at Westminster, and in 1540 it lost all
connection with the Council. It prospered throughout Elizabeth’s reign but was weakened
when it was determined in the 1590s to be subordinate to the common law courts, so that it
was thereafter unable to overturn common-law judgements and risked its own judgements
being set aside. It ceased to function when Charles I fled to Oxford in 1643 and it could no
longer access the privy seal.10
By 1500 the Exchequer had had a common-law side for several centuries. Its equity side only
emerged in the first half of the sixteenth century; Bryson proposes 1531 as the date for the
first probable case.11 Those entitled to sue in the court on either side were Exchequer
officers, royal accountants (i.e. crown officers who had a duty to collect monies and account
for them to the Exchequer, an example being the collectors of customs duties at seaports) and
debtors to the crown. From 1649, although bills formally included a statement that the
plaintiff was an accountant and debtor to the crown, this claim could no longer be traversed
(denied) in court and so became a tolerated fiction. All the cases included in this study should
therefore be from plaintiffs in one of the three categories above.12
An action in any of the courts was initiated by filing a bill of complaint. A complaint filed on
behalf of the Crown by the Attorney-General or another officer was known as an
‘information’ because the monarch was, through the officer, directing the court rather than
asking a favour of it; such informations became common in Exchequer in the latter part of
Elizabeth’s reign. 13 The defendant was then required to submit an answer to the bill,
although other legal responses were available, sometimes being used to delay the case. At this
stage, a complainant could also ask the court for an injunction, staying the defendant from
persisting with a suit in another court or with some other aspect of the matter of complaint.14
Having seen the answer, the complainant could then embellish or reemphasise his claim (a
‘replication’) to which the defendant would then submit a further answer (a ‘rejoinder’).
These steps could be repeated if necessary. Collectively, these documents are referred to as
the pleadings. If the case had not by then been withdrawn or settled out of court, which it
could be at any stage and often was, the next step was for questions to be asked on behalf of
both parties of their chosen witnesses (‘interrogatories’) and for the witnesses to provide their
sworn responses (‘depositions’). Interrogatories were also directed by the complainant at the
defendant. The depositions might made in person at the relevant court in Westminster but
were frequently, especially for non-London parties, made before a commission of prominent
locals. Finally, a hearing day was set at which the parties, often represented by learned
council, would come before the court to receive judgement. Judgement was given orally,
although was also noted within the court’s order books and sometimes on the reverse of bills.
9
Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, pp. 127-8.
Tim Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1998), p. 73.
11
W. H. Bryson, The Equity Side of the Exchequer (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 14-16.
12
Bryson, The Equity Side, p. 94.
13
Bryson, The Equity Side, p. 94.
14
Horwitz, Chancery Records, p. 3.
10
3
The survival of orders is by no means complete for the period of study, the most glaring
deficiency being the loss of all Star Chamber order books, although some Star Chamber
verdicts survive either inscribed on the reverse of bills or in the personal notebooks of some
contemporary officers.15 For Chancery cases, the record of some cases was entered on the
decree rolls where the pleadings and verdict could be easily referenced should the issue ever
threaten to be resurrected. Sometimes this was by agreement of the parties, the case having
been brought collusively in order to establish a public record, particularly in relation to
property rights. For example, Beresford identifies five Sussex cases where enclosures were
formalised in this way out of 260 nationally, fairly close to the national average although
considerably fewer than the 30 for Lincolnshire. 16 Roll entry happened for only a small
proportion of those cases for which a bill was originally presented. Knafla, for example, finds
that only six out of 58 (< 10%) of the Kent cases he calendared had final decrees recorded. 17
Apart from Chancery, each equity court had, at least in theory, advantages or attractions for
particular types of litigant. Requests reputedly dealt with cases from those who could not
afford the costs of prosecuting a case in the other courts; and particularly in its earlier days,
when it was frequently an itinerant court, also with the cases of officers of the royal
household. During Henry VIII’s reign, Requests cases actually cost about the same to
maintain as ones in Star Chamber, although both were cheaper than resorting to the common
law courts.18 Requests, when itinerant, may however have offered a cost advantage to local
complainants. Also, from the 1580s, Chancery did often refer cases to Requests where the
monetary value of a case was under £5.19 Star Chamber dealt only with cases with a criminal
element, particularly where violence had been, or was alleged to have been, threatened,
although this may sometimes have been a fiction. Exchequer initially required the case to
involve creditors to the Crown, although as noted above this later also became a fiction. The
records of Chancery, Requests, Star Chamber and Exchequer are within TNA classes C,
REQ, STAC and E respectively.
1.2 Early Modern Sussex
Although not that distant from London, in many ways Sussex was an economic backwater.
The county’s development was hampered by poor roads in the Wealden lands between the
South Downs and the North Downs of Surrey and Kent. Sussex’s early modern economy was
based largely on farming: grain and sheep being predominant on the downs and the coastal
plains to the south and west and stock-fattening and pig-keeping in the Weald to the north
and east, where timber was also an important commodity. Some reasonably large areas of the
Wealden woods were imparked. The main non-agricultural industry in the Weald was iron
founding, which, as with agriculture, was largely controlled by the landed gentry.20 Demand
for timber both for ship- and house-building and to fuel the furnaces not only made wood a
valuable commodity but led to its gradual exhaustion, as Michael Drayton noted in the early
seventeenth century:
15
Amanda Bevan, Tracing your Ancestors in the National Archives (Kew, 2006), p. 529.
M. W. Beresford, ‘The Decree Rolls of Chancery as a Source for Economic History, 1547‐c. 1700’, Economic
History Review, 32 (1979), pp. 1-10.
17
Knafla, KAL, Chancery, pp. xviii-xix.
18
Laura Flannigan, ‘Justice in the Court of Requests, 1483-1538’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2020), p. 127.
19
Stretton, Women Waging Law, pp. 74-5.
20
R. Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex (Leicester, 1969), pp. 1-8; Cynthia B. Herrup, The
Common Peace (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 11-22.
16
4
‘These Forrests as I say, the daughters of the Weald
(That in their beauie breasts, had long their greefs conceal’d)
Foreseeing, their decay each howre so fast came on,
Vnder the axes stroak, fetcht many a grieuous grone,
When as the anuiles weight, and hammers dreadfull sound,
Euen rent the hollow Woods, and shook the queachy ground.’21
Of the ancient ports, only Rye prospered during much of the period, being the largest town in
the county in the mid-sixteenth century. However, by the end of the century, the silting up of
its harbour prevented the expansion of maritime commerce and fishing, and the latter two did
not increase significantly at the other ports including Chichester, Shoreham, Brighton and
Hastings. Fishing and sea trade were also affected by competition and piracy from across the
Channel. Chichester never developed the same influence as many cathedral towns elsewhere.
On the other hand, the main town in east Sussex, Lewes, benefited from its central location
by attracting a coterie of merchants and also became somewhere the gentry of the eastern
county maintained townhouses. These transitions resulted in a shift in the county’s population
balance from the coastal plan to the Weald between 1500 and 1650. By the early seventeenth
century, there were 21 market towns in total in the county, mainly in the Weald, with a
typical population of around 1,000. The dissolution of the monasteries also resulted in a
significant redistribution of land across the county. For example, Battle Abbey was granted to
courtier Sir Anthony Browne, and London merchant Robert Palmer acquired Parham,
originally a grange of Westminster Abbey. By the 1580s, there were seven noble families in
the county and an estimated eighty resident gentry families. Since the Reformation, a
west/east Catholic/Protestant divide had developed, the consequences of which can be seen in
those cases which relate to the lands of recusants attainted for treason, as can the direct
legacy of the Reformation itself.22
1.3 Property and Debt as causes for equity actions.
Property in the early modern period belonged ultimately to the Crown, with larger
landholders holding manors directly from the Crown (in chief) and others holding indirectly
from larger landholders. The most secure form of land tenure within a manor was freehold
(‘fee simple’), such land being heritable by the holder’s legal heirs under common law.
Subordinate to that was ‘fee tail’, in which the heritability of the premises was restricted to
specified descendants of the holder and, perhaps, a specified spouse. Beneath that came
various forms of customary tenure. The most secure was copyhold tenure under which the
heritability of a property was subject to the customs of the particular manor. In Sussex this
was most frequently ‘borough-english’, a form of ultimogeniture by the youngest son or his
heirs (or by daughters equally in the absence of a son), which could result in freehold and
copyhold land descending differently. Below copyhold tenure in decreasing order of security
came leases for lives (e.g. until the death of the longest lived of a married couple), leases for
fixed terms, and tenancies at will. Copyhold property escheated to the manor in the absence
of heirs. It could, however, be sold by being surrendered to the manor court on the
understanding that it would be granted to the buyer. It could also be surrendered to the use of
21
Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (London, 1612), p. 265
Anthony Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War: Sussex 1600-1660 (London, 1975), pp. 9-10;
Herrup The Common Peace, p. 22; J T Mousley, ‘The Fortunes of some Gentry Families of Elizabethan
Sussex’, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 11, No. 3 (1959), pp. 467-83; N. Antram and N.
Pevsner, The Buildings of England, Sussex: East, with Brighton and Hove (Yale, 2013), p. 34; Peter Brandon
and Brian Short, The South East from AD 1000 (London, 1990), p. 136.
22
5
the tenant’s will, enabling it to be bequeathed outside the customary route of inheritance.
Disputes in these matters were generally handled at the relevant manor courts, although if the
dispute was with the lord of the manor or with one of the chief inhabitants who was often a
member of the homage (jury) it was probably less likely that a fair outcome would result.
From the late fifteenth century, Chancery judges gradually began to take on cases of eviction
of copyholders which had previously been considered as a private matter between a landlord
and their tenants, as subsequently did Star Chamber and Requests. Initially, common law
courts were considered to have no jurisdiction and it was not until later in the sixteenth
century that, perhaps with a view to sharing in the revenue flowing to Chancery from
copyhold cases, common law judges began to accept that writs of ejectment could be issued
to copyholders as well as freeholders (common law proceedings were at this time
commenced by issuing a writ, of which there were a number of different types; an action
could not be brought if it could not be made to fit a suitable writ). 23
For much of the period of study, cash in the form of gold or silver coinage was in critically
short supply. Most transactions therefore took place using credit, whether offered by
tradesmen to their customers or provided by third parties under bond. Unsurprisingly,
substantial litigation arose when lenders sought to obtain repayment of debt.24 In many cases,
local or national common law courts sufficed, but their rigid process could be abused. Bonds
typically had penal default clauses, requiring payment of perhaps double the original amount
borrowed. A common law court would enforce the penalty even if the debtor had already paid
back most of the debt or had been ill and was late in making full payment. However, the
equity courts could issue an injunction to stay proceedings in common law and, the
complainant hoped, produce a fairer outcome once the case had been heard. Not surprisingly,
therefore, debt was also frequently contested in these courts.25
23
Charles Montgomery Gray, Copyhold, Equity and the Common Law (Harvard, 1963), pp. 65-6Baker, An
Introduction, pp. 60-4.
24
Craig Muldew, The Economy of Obligation (Basingstoke, 1998), particularly chapters 4 and 8.
25
Christopher Brooks, Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth (Cambridge, 1986), p. 72.
6
2. Historiography
As will be seen, disputes over property rights were the largest single reason for bringing
equity court actions. Nationally the historiography tends to focus on the erosion of customary
rights and their defence by the courts. Tawney, for example, considered that one of the most
significant features of the sixteenth century economic and legal environment was the coming
to dominance of a tripartite division of agriculture between landlords, capitalist farmers and
landless agricultural labourers. This was fostered by the conversion of copyhold ownership
into leasehold and the weakening of the ability of copyholders to avoid paying rent equivalent
to the economic value of their land (which they could do while rents and entry fines were
fixed by custom).26 He considered that the equity courts were an instrument of state policy to
protect the tenants against inequitable but legal actions of landlords, a policy Wolsey had
initially fostered. Tawney particularly held up the Court of Requests as the tenants’
champion, quoting mainly cases transcribed from its records by I. S. Leadam.27 Tawney
estimated that the mix of tenants across England in the sixteenth century was around 20%
freehold, 60% customary and 13% leasehold, 7% being of uncertain status. He noted,
however, that these proportions varied materially between counties and within individual
manors.28 Brent finds that in eastern Sussex the number of freehold and copyhold tenants
reduced over the sixteenth century because the size of such tenants’ holdings increased,
particularly in the downlands.29 Tawney’s conclusions that, despite the support of the equity
courts, landlords were able to offset the inflationary erosion of fixed rents by variable entry
fines has been challenged in recent years; for example by Jennifer Hornby who used the
evidence from a sixteenth-century equity case in the Duchy of Lancaster court.30
A long-running debate between historians who consider that demographic and commercial
factors were the prime drivers of the evolution of agrarian capitalism, both in ‘Tawney’s
century’ and other times, and those who consider that ‘class structure’ and conflict were key,
was brought into a focus by Robert Brenner in a 1974 paper, which gave rise to much
subsequent debate.31 The research underlying this dissertation has been carried out with the
‘Brenner debate’ and the work of Tawney and his revisionists in mind, with a view to
determining whether further evidence can be found to contribute to the debate. Other
researchers have, for example, already found evidence in Sussex of the gentry and upper
yeomanry buying out copyholders and engrossing holdings around Burgess Hill and the
nearby parts of the Weald and of encroachment on the extensive forested areas of the more
eastern Weald by immigrant cottagers and labourers.32
26
Tawney, The Agrarian Problem, pp. 1-2.
I. S. Leadam, Select Cases in the Court of Requests A. D. 1497-1569 (Selden Society, London, 1898).
28
Tawney, The Agrarian Problem, pp. 24-6.
29
C. E. Brent, ‘Employment, Land Tenure and Population in Eastern Sussex, 1540-1640’ (Sussex Univ. Ph. D.
thesis, 1973) especially pp. 200-1. Moreover, the tenants were often other gentry and/or existing leaseholders on
the manor demesne.
30
Jennifer S. Holt, ‘The Financial Rewards of Winning the Battle for Secure Customary Tenure’, in Jane
Whittle (ed.), Landlords and Tenants in Britain, 1440-1660, (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 133-49.
31
Robert Brenner, ‘Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe’, in T. H.
Aston and C. H. E. Philpin (eds.), The Brenner Debate (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 10-63. Also other chapters in this
collection of essays.
32
Caroline J. Adams, ‘The influence of the early modern gentleman on the changing landscape of West Sussex’
The Local Historian, Vol 50, No 4 (2020), p. 272; Herrup, The Common Peace, p. 22.
27
7
Turning to debt, Muldrew has found that economic activity expanded far more rapidly in
Elizabeth’s reign than did the supply of money, leading to a significant increase in debt and
bonds. This trend continued in the seventeenth century, exacerbated by the decreasing quality
of the coins due mainly to clipping.33 Brooks notes that debt actions in King’s Bench rose
over forty-fold from 150 to 6,500 (from 19% of all actions to 80%) between 1560 and 1640,
whilst those in Common Pleas rose sixfold from 3,000 to 18,000 (from 67% to 88% of all
actions). To the extent they can be identified, actions relating to property never represented
anything like these numbers. Brooks adds that bonds served a wider purpose than just
evidencing borrowing, also being entered into to guarantee property or commercial
agreements, and thus by no means all actions on bonds are solely to force a repayment.34
Many cases either at common law or equity did not progress to a hearing. Muldrew notes that
the threat to issue a writ, or its actual issuance, frequently resulted in the bond being satisfied,
the debtor wishing to avoid both the cost of legal action and damage to their creditworthiness
and social standing if they were arrested or had their goods attached before the hearing. 35
Although the Victoria County History for Sussex provides a largely narrative parochial and
manorial history, it is of help in establishing the background of some property disputes in the
equity courts. It is, however, incomplete, missing the rape of Pevensey and parts of the rape
of Arundel. Sussex’s Elizabethan period, specifically its religious turmoil, has been examined
by Roger Manning, and a more general history of its pre-Restoration Stuart period has been
written by Anthony Fletcher, although neither make significant use of equity court
proceedings.36 There is in fact relatively little explicit historiography of early modern Sussex
at law. Cynthia Herrup writes only about the criminal law.37 Agriculture aside, as already
noted, one of Sussex’s main industries of this time was iron founding. Its history has been
documented most recently by Henry Clere and David Crossley, who use a number of equity
court disputes as source material.38
The historiography of the Westminster equity courts has mainly been written by legal
historians, although useful information about litigants and their reasons for bringing actions
can still be found. Firstly, looking at Chancery, W. J. Jones estimates that around 200 cases
were commenced nationally in the first decade of Elizabeth’s reign, rising to around 500 per
decade by its end.39 Jones describes a key aspect of Chancery’s jurisdiction as being to rule
on the performance of agreements, including those only made orally, and the proper
fulfilment of duties such as the admission of copyholders. As an example, he gives debts
which were largely but not fully repaid by the date specified, where Chancery was likely to
award only the balance owing, as opposed to the whole which might be awarded in common
law.40 Jones also mentions litigants ranging from the nobility to the poor, referring in
particular to the ability of the latter to sue in forma pauperis in which they might have most
or all of their legal costs paid for them. By 1619, all who would sue in such form were being
referred to Requests.41 Henry Horwitz has made a detailed study of Chancery cases after
33
Muldew, Economy of Obligation, pp. 99-100.
Brooks, Pettyfoggers, pp. 68-70.
35
Muldew, Economy of Obligation, pp. 274-6.
36
Manning, Religion and Society in Elizabethan Sussex. Fletcher, A County Community in Peace and War.
37
Herrup, The Common Peace.
38
Henry Clere and David Crossley, The Iron Industry of the Weald (2nd edition, Cardiff, 1995).
39
W. J. Jones, The Elizabethan Court of Chancery (Oxford, 1967), p. 305.
40
Jones, Chancery, pp. 421, 441.
41
Jones, Chancery, pp. 323-4.
34
8
1600. He sampled cases from 1627 and allocated them according to type as shown in Table 1
below.42
Subject matter
Land
39%
Debt/Bonds
29%
Estates
19%
Trusts
7%
Business
6%
Table 1: Proportions of Chancery complaints by subject matter 1627 (n=291)
By ‘estates’, he means complaints relating to wills and intestacies. ‘Trusts’ related almost
exclusively to marriage settlements. Cases which fell into the ‘land’ category prominently
featured demands for the performance of agreements to enter into property transactions and
requests for rectification of defective title (almost all of which were rural). Sussex’s
experience is compared in chapter 4 below.
The Chancery enrolled decrees were the subject of a major calendaring project in the 1970s,
revealing not just the enclosure formalisations mentioned earlier but also the diversity of
cases associated with trade, including two Sussex iron industry cases. 43 The decrees (and
other Chancery documents) were used by Maria Cioni to explore the court’s role in upholding
Elizabethan women’s rights, and were more recently used by Helen Saunders to research
Chancery’s treatment of heirs who had been tricked out of their inheritance.44
For Requests, Tim Stretton has analysed the small number of cases brought by women or
relating to marital issues.45 Similarly, the tiny number of admiralty cases has been studied by
Emily Kadens.46 Detailed studies of the court in the earlier Tudor period have been made by
D. A. Knox and Laura Flannigan, and W. B. J. Allsebrook has studied it in Elizabethan
times.47 Little work has, however, been carried out specifically on property cases or, indeed,
on the generality of Requests cases, although Kadens also considered 518 general cases of
Elizabeth’s reign and found around 40% related to property and 25% to bonds, with fraud,
inheritance and stays of proceedings in other courts each made up around a further 10%. The
remaining 5% covered a wide range of matters.48 Allsebrook specifically identifies manorial
42
Horwitz, Chancery Records, pp. 31-2.
Beresford, ‘Decree Rolls of Chancery’, pp. 3, 10.
44
Maria L. Cioni, ‘The Elizabethan Chancery and women’s rights’, in DeLloyd J. Guth & John W. McKenna
(eds.), Tudor Rule and Revolution (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 159-82; Maria L. Cioni, Women and Law in
Elizabethan England with particular reference to the Court of Chancery (New York & London, 1985);
Helen Ruth Saunders, ‘“Corrupt bargains and unconscionable practices”: the expectant heir in the seventeenthcentury Chancery’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2019).
45
Stretton, Women Waging Law; Tim Stretton, Marital Litigation in the Court of Requests 1542-1642
(Cambridge, 2008).
46
Emily Kadens, ‘The Admiralty Jurisdiction of the Court of Requests’, in John Witte, Jr., Sara McDougall and
Anna di Robilant (eds.), Texts and Contexts in Legal History: Essays in Honor of Charles Donahue 349
(Robbins Collection 2016), accessed on 6 September 2021 at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2877998.
47
D. A. Knox, ‘The Court of Requests in the reign of Edward VI 1547-1553’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis,
1974); Flannigan, ‘Justice in the Court of Requests’; W. B. J. Allsebrook, ‘The Court of Requests in the reign of
Elizabeth’ (London Univ. M.A. thesis, 1936).
48
Kadens, ‘Admiralty Jurisdiction’, pp. 353-4.
43
9
disputes as making up a material proportion of the property cases in the later sixteenth
century and questions of usury arising in bond cases.49
Early Star Chamber history and processes have been well documented by J. A. Guy. He
analyses 473 cases of the time of Wolsey and finds that 194 refer directly to land title and that
tens of others had title as the issue underlying a primary allegation of riot or other violent
behaviour.50 He refers to one Sussex case, concerning the failure of a grand jury to reach a
verdict due to conflicting testimonies.51 Geoffrey Elton based six microhistories on cases in
the reign of Henry VIII, one of which related in a small part to Sussex (that concerning
Whelplay the informer).52 Synopses of cases of particular political or local interest can also
be found from later periods, drawing on accounts in the Ellesmere and Harleian manuscripts,
few of which however are Sussex cases.53 Specific types of cases have also been studied,
mainly by legal historians, such as Henry Mares on fraud and dishonesty.54
For Exchequer, the definitive history is that of W. H. Bryson. He relates how its equity side
started small, there being only around 20 cases prior to Elizabeth’s reign. The volume then
grew slowly averaging six cases a year until 1572, but then escalated rapidly with well over
2,000 bills surviving from the subsequent 15 years. Thereafter there was an average of over
300 bills a year right through to the Interregnum.55 Being largely an administrative history,
Bryson writes little of the subject matter of cases, although he notes that the most common
early cases were by holders of crown tenancies whose revenue was being diminished by
action of the defendant. There were also tax and, after 1558, tithe disputes. 56
Louis Knafla, in his ongoing Kent at Law 1602 series, has transcribed the documents of cases
in a range of courts which involved Kentish litigants, and which had any part of their process
in 1602. So far, he has published volumes covering manorial, town and country jurisdictions
and, at Westminster, Wards and Liveries, Chancery, Star Chamber and Requests. The
volumes covering the latter three each provide a brief but up to date summary of the history
and processes of the relevant court, together with some commentary on and analysis of the
cases transcribed. His analysis does not include the subject matter of the cases, although the
social demography of the participants is tabulated. As 1602 is reasonably central to my period
of study, Knafla’s cases form a useful benchmark against which to compare Sussex cases in
these three courts of both the Tudor and Stuart periods. At the time of writing, his volume on
Exchequer was in preparation, but he has kindly provided me with a draft.
Knafla and several other authors have produced statistics on the geographical distribution of
cases. Those relevant to Sussex are summarised in Table 2.
Allsebrook, ‘The Court of Requests’, pp. 134-50.
J. A. Guy, The Cardinal’s Court (Trowbridge & Esher, 1977), pp. 52-3.
51
Guy, The Cardinal’s Court, pp. 61-3.
52
G. R. Elton, Star Chamber Stories (London, 1958; reprinted 1974), pp. 78-113.
53
For example, Samuel Rawson Gardiner (ed.), Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High
Commission (Selden Society, 1886).
54
Henry Mares, ‘Fraud and Dishonesty in King’s Bench and Star Chamber’, American Journal of Legal
History, 59, (2019), pp. 210–31.
55
Bryson, The Equity Side, pp. 14-16. Exchequer also had a common law side of several centuries’ standing.
56
Bryson, The Equity Side, p. 19.
49
50
10
Author Court
Dates
n
Knafla
Chancery
1596-1616
3542
Horwitz Chancery
1627
285
Knafla
Star Chamber 1601-3
339
Guy
Star Chamber 1515-1529
821
Guy
Star Chamber 1601-2
783
Flannigan Requests
1495-1535
1195
Stretton Requests
1558-1603
2000
Knafla
Exchequer
1558-1603
7675
Brooks Common Pleas 1560/1606
Brooks Kings Bench 1606
* Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Hertfordshire, Essex
Sussex
2.9%
3.5%
2.5%
3.1%
2.1%
-
Kent
Surrey Hampshire
Total
4.2%
1.8%
2.6%
11.3%
9.5%
4.4%
1.2%
3.2%
12.4%
4.8%
3.8%
1.5%
12.6%
4.8%
2.9%
3.3%
14.1%
2.9%
1.2%
2.3%
8.5%
** Sussex, Kent, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire
Home
Assizes Southern
Circuit* England**
14%
14%
12%
15%
9%
10%
18%
15%
20%
17%
11%
11%
13%/16%
12%
-
Table 2: Geographical distribution of equity and common law court cases.57
Table 2 suggests that Sussex was no more or less litigious than neighbouring counties. The
population of Sussex in 1676 (a little beyond the end date of this study but the earliest
estimate I could find) was about 80,000.58 That for the whole of England was around five
million.59 Sussex therefore had around 1.6% of the national population. Table 2 might
therefore suggest Sussex had a greater than average propensity to resort to the courts.
However, as a number of northern counties had access to the equity jurisdiction of palatine
courts and, for some of the period, also of the Council in the North, a slight southern
disproportionality might be expected. It can therefore reasonably be concluded that both over
time and across courts, the early modern Sussex populace was no more than averagely
litigious.
From the examination of both record books and petitions, Flannigan identifies an imbalance
in the social status of Requests litigants, with around 10% of complainants but over 40% of
defendants having gentry status or above. Around 30% of litigants on both sides were clergy,
the church being a major pre-Reformation landowner. Also, around 30% of complainants
were women, sometimes jointly with their husbands but most often as femme sole, widows
especially. She concludes that the court in Henrician time ‘typically pitted the lower clergy,
craftsmen, small-time landowners and widows against higher-ranking male gentry and
ecclesiastics.’ It was not, certainly at that time, a court solely for the poor. She found only 28
cases marked paup[er], higher than the miserly two reported for Star Chamber and similar to
the 20 known for Chancery. The vast majority of complainants must therefore have paid their
own costs, which amounted perhaps to £1-£2 for each legal term the case persisted including
travel to and from Westminster or another location, which may explain why many cases did
not proceed beyond their early stages.60
Andy Wood has examined depositions for Exchequer and Star Chamber to reveal the fears of
tenants regarding attempts to enclose common lands and their recollections of long-standing
customary practices.61 He adds that some of the worser fears expressed in evidence given
Knafla, KAL, Chancery, p. xxix and Star Chamber, p. xxviii (latter includes ‘London’ as a county, so
potentially denuding Surrey of cases, and possibly Kent and Essex to a lesser extent); Knafla, KAL, Exchequer
(draft), p. xxxv; Horwitz, Chancery Records, p. 40; Flannigan, ‘Justice in the Court of Requests’, p. 113; J. A.
Guy, The Court of Star Chamber and its records to the reign of Elizabeth I (London, 1985), p. 61; Brooks,
Pettyfoggers, p. 64.
58
Kim Leslie and Brian Short (eds.), An Historical Atlas of Sussex (Chichester, 1999), p. 66.
59
E. A. Wrigley and R. S. Schofield, The Population History of England 1541-1871 (London, 1981), p. 532.
60
Flannigan, Justice in the Court of Requests, pp. 115-30.
61
Andy Wood, The Memory of the People (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 158-9.
57
11
may well be rhetorical hyperbole, deponents being aware of what forms of words might be
effective in court. Heather Falvey further warns that depositions were recorded by clerks who
often extended what was probably a simple response into a longer affirmation or denial
largely regurgitating the wording of the interrogatory.62 In a similar vein, for a case to be
accepted by Star Chamber, it was necessary to claim that violence or threat had been used by
the defendants, and such claims cannot be assumed to be wholly, if at all, true. 63 The claim of
extreme poverty in Requests bills is also probably often hyperbolic.64 Wood also refers to
tenants’ recollection of ancestral ownership rights to particular properties.65 This is a matter
which, as will be seen later, was sometimes at variance with documentary evidence which
would be more likely to sway a court.
Heather Falvey, ‘Relating Early Modern Depositions’, in C. J. Griffin and B. McDonagh (eds.), Remembering
Protest in Britain Since 1500 (Cham, Switzerland, 2018), pp. 86-7.
63
Baker, English Legal History, p. 127.
64
Flannigan, ‘Justice in the Court of Requests’, pp. 129-30.
65
Wood, Memory, p. 151.
62
12
3. Data Sources and Methodology
3.1 Data Sources
This section explains what has survived, what has been catalogued (and in what detail) and
what has been digitised: these differ both by court and for different periods. For all the courts
for the period in question, fairly extensive collections of pleadings have survived, with a
lower prevalence of interrogatories and depositions, in part because a significant proportion
of cases never reached that stage. Crucially for this study, much, but not all, of the
cataloguing includes the county of origin and some indication of subject matter. Except
where specified, ‘catalogued’ refers to TNA’s on-line Discovery catalogue and ‘imaged’ to
the University of Houston’s AALT website images. Looking at each court in turn:
Chancery
Classes C1 to C10 consist of pleadings. Those with cases from the period under study are
summarised in Table 3.
Number
Number
Catalogued
also
Imaged
Class
Dates
C1
1500-38
357
357
C1
1538-58
479
C2
1558-1646
712
C3
1558-1650
923
C5-10
1552-1650
764
Table 3. Number of Sussex Chancery pleadings by class (1500-1650)
C4 (‘Miscellaneous pleadings and depositions’) is largely uncatalogued and only a handful of
Sussex document sets are identifiable; this class will not be considered further. The majority
of C5-C10 dating up to 1650 are from C7 and C8.
Class C78 contains the decree rolls, which begin late in the reign of Henry VIII. 123 Sussex
entries from 1541 to 1606 are catalogued on Discovery and a further 149 entries from 1598 to
1650 are catalogued on Waalt, a wiki associated with AALT. Both listings derived from the
1970s project described by Beresford. The entries on Discovery also include an indication of
whether the case was dismissed. All are imaged.
In addition, class C33 contains the order books of the court. These have been imaged but are
accessible only by the names of the parties. It is possible in theory to determine the outcome
of Sussex cases not included in C78 if one or more of the names can be matched, although
this is beyond the scope of this work.
Requests
Only a small number of cases from class REQ2 have been catalogued (bundles 1 to 15)
although a printed list extends this to bundle 136.66 Manuscript lists at TNA extend this
further to bundle 424. Volunteers at TNA have input these manuscript lists to an Excel
Public Record Office, ‘List of Proceedings in the Court of Requests Preserved in the Public Record Office’,
Lists and Indexes, XXI (1906).
66
13
spreadsheet.67 The order books of the court in class REQ1 have been imaged. However, these
are not indexed apart from Volumes 18, 19, 47 and 48 which have been indexed on Waalt
(covering 1594-1601), and some earlier Henrician volumes privately indexed by Flannigan.
Star Chamber
STAC1-5 and 7-10 are catalogued (there is no class STAC6). There are 306 Sussex document
sets dating from 1499 to 1631, of which 88 are from STAC2 (Henry VIII) and 160 from
STAC8 (James I). Only 17 are from STAC 5 (Elizabeth) as the cataloguing has not
progressed past plaintiffs whose names begin with ‘A’. Most of the cases from the reign of
Charles I have been lost.68 Waalt has an ongoing project cataloguing STAC5 document sets,
which is accessible by county; these entries, plus some others, have been put on to a
spreadsheet at TNA, from which I was provided with a subset of around 95 Sussex cases.69
Percy Mundy has very usefully summarised 92 Sussex cases up to the end of the reign of
Philip and Mary, although he provides no commentary on them.70
Exchequer
Exchequer pleadings have not been catalogued or imaged. However, they are filed at TNA by
county in E112/45 (160 Elizabethan cases), E/112/127 (100 Jacobean cases) and E/112/250
(Charles I). There are manuscript indices to these at TNA (IND 1/16821, 16823 and 16825
respectively, which occasionally include subject matter).
Some interrogatories and depositions have been catalogued:
• E133 (Depositions before the Barons): 68 Sussex cases from 1564-1600.
• E134 (Depositions taken by commission): 116 Sussex cases from 1570-1646.
Some order and decrees have been catalogued on Waalt and imaged. These are:
• E124 (Orders and decree entry book): 145 Sussex entries between 1603-1611.
• E126 (Decree entry books): 28 Sussex entries between 1603 and 1650.71
3.2 Methodology
Discovery was searched for each relevant class using ‘Sussex’ as a search term and the
resulting entries downloaded to Excel spreadsheets. The Waalt entries for the later C78, E124
and E126 are in text form; Sussex entries were identified by word search and individually
copied to spreadsheets. Sussex entries in the TNA REQ2 spreadsheet were identified by
word-search and copied to a separate spreadsheet.
The catalogue descriptions were then edited to remove details of the plaintiff and defendant,
and for STAC8 the ‘Barnes’ categorisation. The remaining part of description was then
searched for the presence of particular words falling under one of two categories: land (e.g.
TNA, Excel spreadsheet entitled ‘REQ 2 amalgamated from piece 016 onwards part checked’, accessed on 30
August 2021 at appslb.nationalarchives.gov.uk - /hiddenarchives/images/Legal Team/REQ 2/REQ 2 data/
68
Bevan, Tracing your Ancestors, p. 529.
69
Kindly provided by Dr Amanda Bevan.
70
Percy D. Mundy (ed.), Abstract of Star Chamber Proceedings relating to the County of Sussex: Henry VII to
Philip and Mary (Sussex Records Society, XVI (1913).
71
Bryson, The Equity Side, pp. 146-50; Henry Horwitz, Exchequer Equity Records and Proceedings 1649-1841
(Richmond, 2001), p. 69.
67
14
land, messuage, tenant) or financial matters (e.g. bond, debt). A full list of words is given in
Appendix 1. Identifying the right words was a matter of trial and error, with additional words
being added as descriptions were examined individually. Some words are ambiguous and
cannot be used: for example, ‘customs’ which could refer to traditional practices or to a tax
on shipped goods. Inevitably, occasional incorrect categorisation arises when a word is part
of an irrelevant longer word (e.g. ‘land’ in ‘England’). Where identified, such occurrences
have been removed.
Sussex cases are defined as those where at least one plaintiff or one defendant are stated as
living in Sussex, or, where Sussex is referenced in the description of the case. Any cases not
fitting this definition but, rather, relating to the Earls or Countesses of Sussex or to Sidney
Sussex College, Cambridge, were identified and removed. Multiple document sets relating to
the same case have generally not been excluded (as cursory examination showed their
proportion to be small) other than where mentioned.
The median date of cases in a class was then calculated, which gives an indication of whether
the cases were spread uniformly across their range. Where an exact year is not catalogued for
a case (e.g. those Chancery bills only dateable to the period of office of the Chancellor or
Lord Keeper to whom they are addressed), the mid-point of the catalogue date range has been
used in the calculation. Pie charts were then produced for each class showing the proportion
of catalogue entries with words relating to land, to financial matters, to both and to neither.
A selection of cases of those imaged, as well as those summarised by Mundy, were then
examined and used to support or expand upon the conclusions drawn from the catalogue
entries. A small number of pleadings and proofs were also examined at TNA for a similar
purpose.
3.3 Reliability of Data Sources
Reliance on others’ cataloguing gives rise to various possible errors and also to
inconsistencies between, or even within, different classes of document. Cataloguing practices
observably differ between document sets. For example, the word ‘property’ itself is not used
in the description of C1 cases yet is the predominant descriptor for land-related cases in C3.
Nevertheless, for those classes where images are also available, it was possible to verify that
cataloguing was generally apposite.
Names of persons or places often appear differently spelled, both within documents and
compared to today. Generally, this is simply due to variable spelling and pronunciation at the
time but occasionally may be due to the palaeography of the transcriber. I have in general
used the modern spelling where a place is identifiable and a consistent spelling otherwise.
The datasets themselves may exhibit various biases, arising, for example, from the relative
probability of survival from different periods and in more recent groupings by archivists.
Comparison with other historians’ results is one way to reveal or rule these out. Bills are most
likely to provide an indication of the issues concerning people. It may be that the proportion
of cases which progressed to deposing witnesses favoured some types of case over another,
and even more so those which reached a hearing and ended in a result. Chancery cases where
final decrees were enrolled are potentially exposed to this type of bias and any conclusions
from these decrees alone as to the overall mix of cases should be very carefully considered.
15
4. Results
4.1 Chancery
4.1.1 Analysis of catalogue descriptions of Sussex cases
C1 (1500-1558; median year 1538)
Of the catalogue entries for the 849 Sussex document sets in this class (which I will refer to
as ‘cases’, notwithstanding the occasional presence of more than one document set for a
case), the great majority relate in some way to property. Figure 1 shows the proportions
falling into the categories described in chapter 3.
Figure 1. Sussex cases in C1 by subject, 1500 -1558 (n=849)
‘Other’ cases include marriage settlement, price/quality of goods, false imprisonment,
education costs, fraud, and perjury.
C2 (1558-1646)
Of the 712 Sussex cases in this class with subject matter descriptions, 322 are from the reign
of Elizabeth, 386 from the reign of James I, and 4 from the reign of Charles I (no more
precise dates are catalogued). Very few of the entries from the reign of Charles I describe the
subject matter of the case.
16
Figure 2. Sussex cases in C2 by subject (n=712)
The overall distribution is not materially different from those of Figure 1. However, there was
a larger proportion of ‘other’ cases in James’s reign compared to Elizabeth’s, particularly
relating to tithes and other ecclesiastical disputes.
C3 (1588-1650; median year 1594)
From class C3 onwards, the catalogue descriptions are much briefer than for C1 and C2,
generally using a common generic descriptor, especially ‘property’ (which had to be added to
the Appendix 1 word list for land cases for these classes) and ‘money matters’. Only two
were given an overlapping description.
Figure 3. Sussex cases in C3 by subject (n=923)
‘Other’ cases were mainly about inheritances and ecclesiastical income (from rectories,
tithes, prebends, etc), plus a handful of cases concerning marriage settlements or trade.
17
C5 -10 (1552-1650; median year 1639)
Figure 4. Sussex cases up to 1650 in C5-C10 by subject (n=761)
There is a noticeably lower proportion of land cases and a higher proportion of cases relating
to financial matters and inheritance (which made up 85% of the ‘other’) in these almost
exclusively seventeenth century document sets compared to the sixteenth century ones
analysed earlier. These statistics can be compared with those of Horwitz (Table 1 above). If it
is assumed that most of Horwitz’s ‘estate’ cases relate to land to some extent, the results are
not dissimilar.
C78 Decree rolls (1541-1606; median year 1569)
The subject matter of the Sussex C78 decrees catalogued on Discovery is shown in Figure. 5.
Figure 5. Sussex decrees in C78 catalogued on Discovery (n=123)
Comparing this distribution to that of Figure 2 suggests that land cases were somewhat more
likely to be pursued to completion and the decrees recorded than for other types of case.
I have been able to identify pleadings surviving for almost half of these decrees, largely in
classes C1 and C3. This may be broadly indicative of the survival rate of pleadings. I have
18
examined a selection of these and conclude that the C78 summary of bills is reasonably
comprehensive, although often lacking in some detail present in the original.
The subject matter of the Sussex decrees can be compared with that nationally (Figure 6),
where at first sight Sussex would appear to have a larger land-related proportion. The
difference can, however, be explained by those financial and ‘other’ cases which have no
county (or London) associated with them (c 40% and c70% respectively). Allowing for these,
there is no evidence that the subject matter of Sussex decrees differed materially from that
nationally.
Figure 6. All decrees in C78 catalogued on Discovery (n=3,611; median year 1566)
C78 Decree rolls (1598-1650; median year 1625)
The subject matter of the further 149 Sussex cases catalogued on Waalt is shown in Figure 7.
Figure 7. Sussex decrees in C78 catalogued on Waalt (n=149; average year 1625)
Compared to Figure 6, there was a larger proportion of cases concerning debts secured on
land and also of inheritance disputes, similar to that seen in Figure 4 above.
19
The number of Sussex decrees recorded by year (Discovery and Waalt) is shown in Figure 8.
An average Elizabethan Chancery case took three years to complete, so decrees reflected bills
originally presented on average three years earlier, and in some cases far longer.72
Figure 8. Sussex cases in C78 by year.
Sussex decrees generally followed the national trend (Fig 9), rising to a peak in the mid1560s, then falling, before a second rise from 1580 until the late 1630s, then falling rapidly in
the run up to and early years of the first Civil War before slowly recovering after 1643. Only
in the 1620s did Sussex seem to experience a reduction in decrees not seen nationally. I have
not discovered any historical explanation for this, and it may just be a statistical anomaly.
Figure 9. C78 decrees 1541-1650. Five-year moving averages.
The increase in Sussex C78 decrees in the century after 1541 was between two- and threefold (see trend line in Figure 8). Whether this mirrored the growth of Chancery cases or was
also affected by a change in the proportion with recorded decrees is a matter which could
72
Jones, Elizabethan Chancery, p. 306.
20
usefully be investigated further. Whichever, it was a much slower rate of growth than the
thirteen-fold increase in litigation in the Westminster common law courts between 1490 and
1640, which was due, amongst other factors, to a doubling of the population, a significant
increase in trade and in the use of debt in financing trade, and the growing inability of manor
courts to resolve financial issues.73
4.1.2 Discussion of land cases
Cases described as concerning ‘detention of deeds’ made up 33% of Sussex land cases in Fig
1. Sometimes sight of a deed was all that was demanded in a bill, such as in the case between
the Abbot of Stanley (Wiltshire) and Thomas Sewell, clerk, who would not show the deeds
concerning the parsonage of Rye to the Abbot.74 There must have been more to the matter
because Sewell was, or at least had been, vicar of Rye.75 In other cases, the bill provides more
background, such as when John Sharpe bequeathed a messuage and 40 acres of land at
Thakeham to Richard Boomer to find (and pay) a priest to sing in the church of Binsted for
Sharpe’s soul and those of his friends for four years, also keeping an annual obit. Bromer had
done this, but the documents concerning the land had come into the hand of one John Scutt
who would not let Bromer have them. Presumably, although this is not stated, Scutt had been
preventing Bromer from receiving the income from the land. This is one of the few cases
where an order (in Latin) was annotated on the reverse of the bill, showing that in 1523, after
the taking of depositions from witnesses, the court required Scutt to deliver the documents
and to pay Bromer’s costs as taxed by the court.76 In a similar case the defendant actually
brought a box of deeds for land in Warnham into the court, which was then handed over to
the plaintiff.77 In other cases, the motivation for the detention is overt in the bill, such as that
concerning land in Horsham, in which Henry Voice withheld the deeds belonging to an
underage relative for fear that the child’s step-father would disinherit him.78 In another case
where the outcome is known, the heirs of John Eston claimed in 1555 that Nicholas Tolkyn
had obtained the documents relating to two houses with orchards and gardens in Rye and was
depriving them of their inheritance. Tolkyn, who was the tenant of the houses, answered that
Eston had only been a tenant in turn and that his, Tolkyn’s, wife was the true owner. The
court, however, ruled that Tolkyn should vacate one of the houses immediately and the other
by the following Michaelmas.79
These cases, and many others like them, exemplify the importance that written evidence of
land ownership had attained by the start of the sixteenth century, as well as the care that
holders took to look after them, such as keeping them in protective boxes.80 Possession of
documentary evidence was often crucial for success in court. For example, in 1562 Chancery
required John Pelham, esquire, to hold a court of the manor of Bivelham to admit John
Atwood and his wife to a particular messuage, provided that Atwood presented proof that his
great-grandfather held that messuage by copyhold at the date of his death. Attwood was to
pay 6s 8d towards the steward’s cost of holding the court and to pay the usual admittance fine
73
Brooks, Pettyfoggers, pp. 51, 93-101.
C 1/576/1 Abbot of Stanley v Sewell (1518-29).
75
L. L. Duncan (ed.), ‘Medieval & Tudor Kent P. C. C. Wills Transcriptions’, manuscript notebook no. 57,
p. 34, made available online, accessed on 8 Aug 2021 at Tudor Will of John PULTON 1513
(kentarchaeology.org.uk). PROB 11/17/184v.
76
C 1/388/24, C 1/388/30, Bromer v Scutt.
77
C 1/470/11, Burdfeld v Burdfeld.
78
C 1/452/41, C 1/587/36, Voice v Voice.
79
C 1/1270/14, C 1/1513/116-119, C 78/9/4, Sampson v Tolkyn.
80
Tom Johnson, Law in Common (Oxford, 2020), pp. 254-65.
74
21
to Pelham.81 Sometimes Chancery would accept alternative evidence, as in the case where a
division of the common at West Chiltington had been agreed between two parties, Howell
and Challenor. All the evidence had come into the hands of Challenor’s heir, who later
refused Howell access to his part of the common, having won a suit at common law on the
matter. However, Howell was able to prove the making of the original agreement, and
Chancery confirmed that it stood.82 The decree in this case was enrolled, thus providing
written proof against challenge from future generations of Challenors.
Of C1 land cases, 7.5% were between parties with the same name and many more were
between relatives with different names, such as that of 1541 (one of only two of the Sussex
C1 cases to have decrees in C78) in which Edward Bellingham, executor for John Everard,
claimed that John’s widowed mother, Joan, as executrix of John’s father’s will, had retained
profits from the land which John had inherited when he came of age. That land consisted of
the manor of Ovingdean and three farms held of Lewes Priory on which were 2,000 sheep, 24
oxen, cows, pigs, and horses, as well as 30 quarters of wheat and 80 of barley and assorted
agricultural equipment. The court acknowledged that Joan had managed the land ‘wisely and
particularly’ during John’s minority and had considerably increased the stock since her
husband’s death in 1524. She had, however, not kept accounts, so the court ruled that she
should pay 500 marks (£333) to Bellingham in instalments over the several years in lieu of
the withheld profits.83 Cases against executors like Joan Everard were not uncommon in
Chancery, as common law and ecclesiastical courts were not well adapted to dealing with
testamentary disputes.84
Another type of party frequently sued was the feoffee to uses (and later the trustee), who
under common law had an absolute right to the property conveyed to them under trust.
Should the feoffees not hold the property for the uses specified, they could only be sued in
equity. One such was John Nalderet the younger, who was the sole surviving feoffee of land
in Wisborough Green, Pulborough and Rudgwick being held under trust for the use of the
heirs of the late John Puttok. Puttok’s grandson Richard claimed to be the heir and that
Nalderet was refusing him the land. Somewhat surprisingly, in his answer Nalderet simply
said that he did not claim any of the property as his own and was ready to do what the court
determined.85 This might be construed as recalcitrance spurred into action by a bill, but a
contemporary second bill reveals that a William Berwyk, referred to in the first bill, was
claiming that John Puttok had sold some of the land to his father, and asked the court to
compel Nalderet to make estate of this land to him rather than Richard Puttok. 86
While most of the cases described above related to freehold land, many cases in Chancery
dealt with copyhold property. Indeed, almost half of the catalogue descriptions include the
word ‘manor’, albeit some of these relate to disputes over the ownership of the manor itself. 87
This is unsurprising, as in about 1630 Coke wrote that whereas in the past ‘The Lords upon
the least occasions would expell out of house and home their poor Copy-holders’, now they
‘stand upon sure ground … [f]or ... the law hath provided several methods of remedy’.
81
C 78/33/23, Atwood v Pelham.
C 78/180/13, Howell v Challenor (1611)
83
C 1/734/49, C 78/2/73, Belingham v Everard; VCH, vol. VII, pp. 227-32; PROB 11/21 238r (will of William
Everard).
84
Jones, Chancery, pp. 400-17; Eugene M. Haertle, ‘The History of the Probate Court’, Marquette Law Review,
Vol 45, Issue 4 (1962), p. 547.
85
C 1/244/81, Puttok v Nalderet.
86
C 1/244/84, Berwyk v Puttok.
87
42% of the AALT-imaged C 78 Sussex cases include the word ‘manor’ in their Discovery description.
82
22
Tawney refers specifically to the ‘momentous departure’ in the fifteenth century when the
Chancery judges decided that copyholders had actionable title.88 Frequently, the case
involved the refusal of a lord of the manor to admit someone to a property to which they
claimed to have the right. For example, a case of 1554 in which Thomas Ingler, his wife and
son claimed to have been granted the reversion of a cottage, a tenement and a messuage with
68 acres and 3 rods of land in the manor of Warminghurst but were refused admittance by
Edward Shelley, esquire, when the incumbent tenant died. Ingler was able to show that an
earlier owner of the manor, the Abbess of Syon, had granted the reversion at a manor court in
1538 (presumably by exhibiting a copy of the roll entry, as the exact date of the court is
recorded). Chancery was convinced by the evidence and required Shelley to admit Ingler and
to pay him £20 for lost rent and costs. 89 Similarly, husbandman Richard Bacon successfully
challenged Thomas Shirley, esquire, lord of the manor of West Grinstead, as he had only
been admitted as a life tenant because of an alleged forfeiture by his father due to illegal
cutting of wood. Taking into account that Bacon’s father had not been ejected during his life,
that Shirley had accepted a heriot on the father’s death, and that Bacon was in his minority at
the time, the court ordered that he must be admitted as a full customary tenant.90
Less successful was John Alusse, who described himself as ‘a poore younge man destitute of
frends and of verye smale abilitie’. He believed that he ought to have inherited a copyhold
property in the manor of Itford after his grandmother’s death, but the lord of the manor,
Roger Gratwicke, had refused him, alleging that the land was demesne land. Despite Alusse
claiming to be too poor to afford a suit at common law, the court in 1587 nevertheless
dismissed the case to the common law for the status of the land to be determined, with the
proviso that if he won then Gratwicke was to admit him.91 Decrees recording dismissions
were not uncommon, making up 28% of the Discovery-catalogued Sussex ones. As in this
case, the most frequent reason for dismission was that the court considered that the case could
be adequately dealt with elsewhere, and so did not need to be before a court of equity. In a
case in 1575, whilst Chancery did not in the end consider it had jurisdiction, it did make it
easier for a widow to defend a suit at common law. Ann Carpenter claimed a life interest in
some property outside the walls of Chichester. The relevant deed was held by Thomas Hills,
who claimed that Anne’s lease was invalid and that he had a more recent lease. Although the
case was dismissed, Chancery ordered that Hills could not take advantage at common law for
Anne’s deed being cancelled, defaced or not exhibited in evidence. 92
Some decrees note the outcome of the case as being mutually agreed between the parties.
These are likely to have been the outcomes of cases brought with the deliberate intention of
generating a permanent record of a transaction or agreement (see p. 4 above). One such case
had its origins in 1572, when George Goring, esquire, of Ovingdean bought the manor of
Barcombe. Two years later, a division of the four commons of the manor was made by
agreement with the tenants and this, alongside the customs of the manor, was documented by
indenture. The tenants were, however, concerned that the indenture might in future be
extinguished by common law and so, with Goring’s acquiescence, submitted a bill to
Chancery which set out the contents of the indenture. The indenture was then ratified by the
88
Sir Edward Coke, The Complete Copy-holder (London 1668, originally published c1630), p. 9; R. H. Tawney,
The Agrarian Problem, p. 292.
89
C 78/13/25, Ingler vs Shelley.
90
C 78/104/4, Bacon v Shirley.
91
C 78/64/13, Alusse v Gratwicke.
92
C 78/51/10, Carpenter v Hilles. This case is also quoted by Cioni (Women and Law, pp. 54-5).
23
court and recorded in full in the decree book.93 The customs, thus recorded for posterity,
included the rents payable, the entry fines (double the rent), the heriot of best beast or 20s if
none, and a fine of 10s for not repairing a property, doubling every six months thereafter if
still not repaired. Fishing and fowling were largely reserved for Goring, with a fine of 3s for
killing a pheasant and 12d for partridge and other birds. The miller was, however, allowed to
set eel pots and angle in the watercourse to Barcombe mill.
4.1.3 Discussion of financial cases
As noted above, many financial cases involved property-related debts, such as that brought
by some tenants of the manor of Bosham in 1638 against Henry Chitty, esquire. They alleged
nearly £4,000 had been raised by the tenants in 1615-16 to defend a suit brought against them
by Lady Berkeley, then owner of the manor, concerning the customs thereof. The money had
been entrusted to Chitty, who had not accounted for his expenditure nor returned the balance
to the tenants. The tenants were unsuccessful, the court dismissing the case on the technical
grounds that the plaintiffs had not shown that they were empowered to represent all the
tenants who had contributed, nor that they were executors or administrators of those
contributors now deceased. On this occasion the broader equity of the case appears not to
have been considered by the court.94
An example of a financial case not concerning property was that brought by Thomas Warcop
of Kirkby (Westmorland), who sold £20 worth of cloth on credit to John Franks of Hastings,
and later travelled from Kirkby to collect his debt, a distance which he emphasised in his bill
was ‘thirteen score miles’. He waited to be paid, only to be arrested by the town officers on
trumped-up actions of debt and trespass. The debt was allegedly for a fine of £2 a day for
contravening sumptuary laws by wearing a doublet edged in velvet in the town for 70 days,
and the trespass entering Frank’s house to demand his money. Warcop had had to pledge the
debt owned by Franks to pay to defend these actions in the local court, so could no longer use
it as evidence under common law to recover his debt. Justice was, however, done by
Chancery, which (in 1527) ordered Franks to pay his debt and also to pay Warcop ten marks
for wrongful arrest.95 In another case, Walter Venables was owed £11 by William Stanney.
Stanney paid £6 and Venables agreed that balance could take the form of 10 quarters of seed
barley. For some reason, the written obligation was placed in the hand of a William Ryman,
to whom Stanney had someone deliver the 10 quarters. Ryman did not pass the barley to
Venables but did forge his cancellation of the obligation. Venables died, and his widow Joan
sought the missing barley, albeit having no documentary proof. Ryman flatly denied
involvement but after taking depositions, the court ruled that he must either deliver to Joan 10
quarters of barley or pay her £5.96
93
C 78/49/33, Page v Goring; VCH, vol. 7, pp. 80-3. This is not the same manor as that mentioned on page 1.
C 78/429/4, Tenants of the manor of Bosham v Chitty.
95
C 1/596/31, Warcop v Franks (bill, with order on reverse)
96
C 78/41/42, Venables v Stanney
94
24
4.2 Requests
4.2.1 Analysis of catalogue descriptions of Sussex cases
The subject matter of the Sussex pleadings in REQ 2 boxes 1-424 is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10. Sussex cases in REQ2 1-424 by subject (c1495-1624, median year 1580) (n=893)
There was a significantly larger proportion of financial cases (and smaller proportion of land
cases) than in Chancery. Moreover, the proportion of financial cases is most likely
understated in Figure 10 because 13% of the document sets in boxes 16 to 424 are not
attributed to any county, and of these 44% are financial and only 21% land. If Sussex cases
made up the same proportion of these as they did of attributed cases (3.3%), then Sussex
financial cases were actually 24% of the total rather than 21% and land cases only 50%.
‘Other’ cases, where the description is not non-specific or absent, often relate to trade,
especially that in iron but also grain and timber.
Dates are assigned to almost all cases in boxes 137 onwards and the distribution by calendar
year is shown in Figure 11. However, 197 document sets in boxes 25 to 136 have been dated
only to Elizabeth’s reign, and some cases of James’s reign may lie uncatalogued in boxes
425+.97 Neither are included in Figure 11, so any deduction from the chart should be treated
cautiously, particularly at either tail.
97
However, a partial sample of the contents of REQ2/500, 600 and 700 only found cases from the reign of
Charles I.
25
Figure 11: Dates of Sussex cases in REQ2 boxes 137 to 424 (n=543).
There is an apparent peak in case numbers in the early 1590s. This mirrors the finding of
Knafla, who analysed the Kent cases in boxes 26 to 294.98 Knafla attributes the peak not to
local factors but to the appointment of Dr Julius Cesar as Master of Requests, and to internal
reforms making Chancery temporarily less attractive. Stretton also noted a peak nationally at
this time and a larger peak in 1596-7. This latter peak is not found in either in Kent or Sussex
data.99 However, Stretton used a dataset limited to boxes 157-167. Repeating his analysis on
the wider dataset of boxes 137 to 424 (Figure 12) does not show the second peak, suggesting
a date bias in Stretton’s sample. Sussex numbers are also seen to mirror national trends
reasonably closely.
Figure 12: Dates of all cases in REQ2 boxes 137 to 424 (n=16,867). Cases dated after 1624 or before
1558 have been excluded.
I have noted the nature of the parties, where mentioned, in the printed catalogue entries for
boxes 1 to 136.100 The results are shown in Table 4.
Knafla, Kent at Law – Requests, pp. xxxi-xxxii
Stretton, Women Waging Law, p. 74.
100
Public Records Office, List of Proceedings in the Court of Requests, preserved in the Public Record Office,
Vol. 1, Lists and Indices No. XXI (1906).
98
99
26
Plaintiff Defendant
Single male
63%
55%
Single female
9%
3%
Joint (husband and wife)
13%
7%
Other joint (first name male)
12%
32%
Other joint (first name female)
2%
2%
Missing/Unclear
1%
1%
Table 4. Nature of parties in Sussex cases in REQ2 1-136 (n=323)
Individuals or married couples were more likely to sue than non-married joint parties, but
non-married joint parties were more likely to be sued than to sue. Women were plaintiffs in at
least 24% of cases, which is comparable to Stretton’s 20% but somewhat larger than Amy
Erikson’s 17% for Elizabethan Chancery plaintiffs.101 However, they were defendants in
only around half that proportion.
As to social status, 14% of both plaintiffs and defendants were gentry or nobility and 13% of
plaintiffs and 6% of defendants were described as yeomen or husbandmen, although in most
cases no status was recorded.102 Some specific trades were noted, including merchant,
butcher, carpenter, tailor, baker and wheelwright. Where the status of both parties was
mentioned, gentlemen were twice as likely to be sued by their social equals or above than to
be sued from below, but they were over six times as likely to sue their equals than to sue
downwards. These results, although probably exaggerated by the practice in bills not always
to mention lower social statuses, are not incompatible with Stretton’s findings that 16%-21%
of litigants were gentry and nobility and that suing down was less likely than suing up but
that suing social equals was most common.103
4.2.2
Discussion of land cases
A typical land case is that of around 1511 when John at Hull, underkeeper of the royal park at
East Greenwich, sought the return of land in Horsham, Warnham and neighbouring parishes
which his late brother had allegedly mortgaged to John Caryll of Warnham, sergeant at law.
Caryll answered that the land had been sold to him, not mortgaged. In an answer to a later
case brought by at Hull’s son George repeating the claim, Caryll wrote that he had shown
evidence of his purchase to the court in the earlier case. This had been examined by the court
and John at Hull’s case dismissed.104
The catalogue descriptions of 27% of Sussex land cases include the word ‘manor’. However,
these are generally not about disputes with the lords of these manors but rather regarding the
rights to property in the manor (68%), or about the ownership of the manor itself (23%). Only
a handful of cases appear to relate to disputes over customs of the manor and none to
enclosure. An example of a case concerning manorial customs is that brought by the five
children of the late Ralph Cowper of Slinfold, three men and two women, against their stepfather, Roger Gratwicke, for depriving them of the income on their father’s copyhold
property at Ticehurst accumulated during their minority, and in particular of selling off the
timber growing on the land. The main issue was whether or not the custom of the manor of
101
Stretton, Women Waging Law, p. 99 (Table 4.5); Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early
Modern England (London, 1993), p. 115.
102
Based on REQ 2/16 – 424. It is more likely that the social status was recorded of gentlemen and above.
103
Stretton, Women Waging Law, pp. 93-4.
104
REQ 2/10/56, REQ 2/2/12, at Hull v Carle.
27
Hammerden, in which the property lay, required Gratwicke to accumulate the profits for the
children’s benefit and whether the lord of the manor could license him to cut and sell the
timber to his own profit. Depositions were taken from witnesses for the children in 1592 (at
Westminster) and for Gratwicke a year later (by commissions at Horsham and Ticehurst).
The case was dismissed in 1598 due to there being a simultaneous suit at common law.105
Nevertheless, from the depositions, we learn amongst other things that when another
(gentleman) copyholder cut down trees without licence, the lord planted a ‘white rodd’ on the
land and deprived him of the land. Another example is Dumbrell v West, an appeal against a
ruling at Portslade manor court. The plaintiff had been deprived of land for which he had held
a lease for life, the manorial jury agreeing that only tenancy at the will of the lord was
customarily permitted. Whist agreeing that the jury was correct in law, the court held that it
was unfair in equity to deprive Dumbrell of his land, so he was allowed to hold it for life.106
Whilst this is an example of the court upholding equity over harsh custom, the Sussex data
suggest that, as with Chancery, Requests was predominantly used by the people of Sussex to
resolve local ownership disputes, often inter-familial, rather than as a shield against
overbearing lordship practices.
4.2.3 Discussion of financial cases
A typical case involved a debtor seeking remission from a creditor who had proceeded
against them at common law for a bond not fulfilled and was seeking not just the debt but
also the penalty (to which, of course, the borrower had initially agreed). The debtor asked for
an injunction to stay proceedings in the other court in the expectation that Requests would
order that the penalty need not be paid. One such case arose when, in August 1590, Robert
Wheeler, parson of Jevington, agreed with Richard Reddam to deliver 72s worth of wheat
and barley to Eastbourne by All Saints’ Day, receiving 40s in advance and being bound in £8
for the delivery.107 Wheeler failed to make the delivery, claiming that Reddam had not
specified to where the grain had to be taken. Reddam commenced a suit at Common Pleas for
the £8. In November 1593, Wheeler presented a bill asking for the suit to be stayed and
Reddam to be required to answer. He was allowed to present in forma pauperis and counsel
and an attorney were assigned to him by the court. Reddam did answer, saying that he had
heard that Wheeler’s benefice was worth £60 a year (i.e. he was not poor) and alleging that
he wasted his money in inns and ale houses. Time passed and Reddam disobeyed an order
and an injunction to appear before the court, which therefore directed a proclamation of
rebellion to the Sheriff of Sussex. This had no effect, and in July 1595 the court ordered one
of its own officers to travel to Reddam’s house in Hastings, arrest him and bring him to the
court.108 This seems eventually to have had some effect, for in November of that year
Reddam was committed to the Fleet until he made ‘better submission’.109 The final record of
this case is in April 1597, when Wheeler was repaid a sum of 40s, which presumably he had
paid into the court being the amount he had been paid by Reddam, suggesting the latter ended
up with neither the grain nor his 40s, never mind the £8 he wanted.110
A similar example is the case of John Puckle of Lewes, who acted as factor for his father in
overseas trade. He took various goods on credit from Richard Gott which he was unable to
105
REQ 1/18/523
REQ 1/13/98 as described in Allsebrook, ‘The Court of Requests in the reign of Elizabeth’, p. 139.
107
REQ 2/55/37, Wheeler v Reddam.
108
REQ 1/18/595-6
109
REQ 1/18/674
110
REQ 1/48 (Waalt, image number 0036)
106
28
sell. Gott allegedly threatened to tell Puckle’s father that his son was in debt unless Puckle
entered into several bonds for the debts, with double the amount on default. Gott then
commenced a suit at Common Pleas to enforce the bonds. Puckle’s bill of 1584 asked
Requests for an injunction to stay the suit, claiming that he did not owe the debt in the first
place as Gott’s goods proved of little value, that he had in any case paid more than he owed,
and that Gott had blackmailed him into entering into the bond. Gott answered blandly that
the bill was ‘rather a verie childish and foolish act’ and asked for its dismissal.111
In 1608 the court was used somewhat differently, when Jeremy Sprackling, a London mercer,
sought to recover £27 owing from deceased Sussex chapman Edward Holland of Steyning,
most likely for stock provided on credit.112 Holland had died twelve years previously, so
Sprackling had waited a long time before bringing an action. This lengthy time gap was fairly
unusual; for example, Muldrew has calculated that in the Kings Lynn Guildhall court the
average time for bringing an action for debt was just over 18 months, although one particular
action there was not brought for over 16½ years.113
111
REQ 2/48/46, Puckle v Gott.
REQ 2/412/123, Sprackling v Holland.
113
Muldrew, Obligation, p. 200.
112
29
4.3
Star Chamber
4.3.1 STAC 1-4 (1499-1558)
The subject matter of these pre-Elizabethan Sussex pleadings is shown in Figure 13.
Compared to Chancery or Requests, there is a high proportion of ‘other’ cases and very few
financial cases.
Figure 13. Sussex cases in STAC 1-4, by subject (n=109; median year 1528)
Mundy’s summaries of 79 Sussex cases in STAC 1-4 include all but 10 of the catalogued
cases. Table 5 shows the subject matter of these cases; the distribution by subject is broadly
consistent with that in Figure 13 above.
Property
Enclosure
Inheritance
Other
10
13
16
Assault
11
Tithes, etc
7
Distraint
5
Forced mariage
3
Miscellaneous
14
TOTAL
79
Table 5: Main subject matter of Mundy cases.
Although Star Chamber under Wolsey was intended to address a range of complaints, its
main business supposedly related to riots and unlawful assembly. Guy finds that in many
cases the underlying matter was often title to property, which Table 5 shows to have been
true for Sussex.114 By no means all Sussex cases mentioned violence or threat, although
eleven cases were described by Mundy as relating to assault with no ulterior motive
mentioned (which is not to say that there was not one).
I have also analysed the geographical location and social status of Mundy’s cases. Locations
were evenly divided between East and West Sussex, with the majority of cases being
associated with the Weald (Table 6). This is interesting, as the Weald was relatively
114
Guy, The Court of Star Chamber, p. 52.
30
underpopulated at this time, although may be indicative of frictions arising as industries
expanded and immigration followed.
East West Total
Weald
28
9
37
Downs
6
14
20
Coastal Plain
0
13
13
Marsh
2
0
2
36
36
72
Table 6: Geographical location associated with Mundy cases where given.
The social status of the first-named complainant was discernible in only around half the cases
and is shown in Table 7. The minor clerics were typically parish priests with concerns about
tithes or other income.
Peer
2
Knight
5
Esquire
4
Gentleman
5
Yeoman
2
Minor Cleric
10
Tradesman
4
Husbandman
4
Widows
4
TOTAL
40
Table 7: Status of first-named complainant in Mundy cases where given.
Table 7 compares reasonably with an analysis by Guy of Wolsey-era cases, although it
exhibits a larger proportion of cases from the gentry and above and a smaller proportion from
yeomen.115 However, the status of gentlemen and clerics was usually mentioned in bills,
whereas that of a yeoman or below was often absent, and so complaints from clerics and
gentry might in fact be closer half of the proportions indicated in both Guy’s analysis and
Table 7. Only five first-named complainants were femmes sole (all widows, including a
dowager duchess). Several other women were joint complainants with their husbands. Of the
20 cases in which the status of both parties can be identified, eight are against individuals of
higher rank, four against those of lower rank and eight of equal rank.
Table 5 shows that 13 of the property cases revolved around inheritance. One such was that
from around 1519 of William Frebody of Pett, a mainly marshland parish near Winchelsea,
against Thomas Ashburnham.116 Frebody alleged that the land descended to him from his
uncle, but that Ashburnham had obtained the documents relating to the property on the
strength of which he had conveyed it to himself or others. Ashburnham answered that the
documents he had related to land he inherited from his father and that he had not conveyed
any of Frebody’s land. Depositions on behalf of Frebody survive, given by long-standing
residents of Pett and neighbouring parishes, some of whom leased the land in question from
Frebody’s ancestors. They recalled the lands of the Frebodys and the Ashburnhams lying
side-by-side, helpfully naming field names or boundary markers. They also mentioned
115
116
Guy, The Court of Star Chamber, p. 62.
STAC 2/15/304-6; Mundy, Star Chamber Proceedings, pp. 34-5.
31
Ashburnham’s father claiming to own some of the land and grandfather Frebody saying on
his deathbed how ‘Master’ Ashburnham had done him wrong. As with all these cases, the
outcome is not known.
A similarly themed case was brought by Agnes, widow of Humphrey Lewknor, esquire, who
claimed that the downland manor of Walderton near the Hampshire border, with its manor
house, was part of her marriage settlement in 1502. She claimed that in 1532 William
Fairmanner and other riotous persons entered the house, damaged the interior and ‘consumed
and wasted’ the goods of the tenant.117 Three years later, in a second case, she claimed that
Fairmanner had now expelled her, being a ‘very aged woman and in great poverty’.118
Fairmanner answered that in 1510 Humphrey Lewknor sold the manor to his father for £50,
the transaction being evidenced by a recovery in the Court of Common Pleas and that he and
his father before him had since continued to ‘quietly enjoy’ the manor. It is difficult to
reconcile the opposing claims.
Ten of the cases relate to enclosure or imparking. In one case, previously discussed by
several historians, the customary tenants of the coastal manor of Ecclesden in West
Angmering complained in 1545 that John Palmer, esquire, the new owner of the manor
(which had previously belonged to the supressed abbey of Syon), had enclosed their pastures,
imparked the common waste and demolished houses.119 They had been forced to accept
inferior lands in substitution. Palmer, who was a courtier and had been a commissioner for
the dissolution of monasteries in Sussex, countered that he had been a major tenant of the
manor for many years and that the part of the waste he had enclosed was simply
proportionate to his holdings and enabled his cattle to be kept separate from those of the other
tenants. The exchange of lands in the West Field for others elsewhere had, in fact, been
agreed over a decade previously between all the tenants, including the complainants.
Common field systems were prevalent in the west Sussex coastal plain and Palmer’s desire to
improve productivity is clear. Although the outcome of the case is unknown, one of the
tenants brough a separate case in Requests, a judgement on which is recorded. In that case,
the substitution of lands was upheld, although a commission was appointed to examine the
fairness of the substitute lands and to enhance them if necessary.120
Opposition to enclosure often took the form of breaking fences (or hedges) by those who had
been excluded. Sir Geoffrey Pole had enclosed a 16-acre wood of his within the bounds of
the Earl of Arundel’s Stansted Forest. In 1531, he alleged that 25 named local men had
broken the hedges and entered the wood, doing much damage .121 Amongst them were a
weaver, a thatcher, a miller, a brickmaker, two ironsmiths and two tailors as well as several
yeomen and husbandmen. They claimed that as tenants of the Earl, they had always had
common of pasture of the wood. The wide range of tradesmen who, presumably, also kept
cattle is noteworthy. A deponent stated that several of the defendants were drinking and
117
STAC 2/21/180; Mundy, Star Chamber Proceedings, p. 54.
STAC 2/21/231; Mundy, Star Chamber Proceedings, pp. 54-6.
119
STAC 2/2/181-2; Mundy, Star Chamber Proceedings, pp. 12-16; I. S. Leadam, ‘The Security of Copyholders
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 8, No. 32 (1893), pp. 684-96; R.
H. Tawney and Eileen Power, Tudor Economic Documents, Vol. 1 (London, 1924), pp. 19-29; Phillis Wragge,
‘Social and Economic History’, VCH, vol II, p. 190; Julian Cornwall, ‘The Ecclesden outrage: a fresh
interpretation’, Sussex Archaeological Collection, 113 (1975), pp. 1-26; History of Parliament Online, ‘John
Palmer of Angmering’, accessed on 6 September 2021 at
PALMER, John (by 1495-1563), of Angmering, Suss. | History of Parliament Online.
120
REQ 1/7/228, REQ 2/10/68, Elizabeth Yonge vs John Palmer.
121
STAC 2/19/306, 315, 334; Mundy, Star Chamber Proceedings, pp. 48-9.
118
32
making merry at local ale house before joining others to go to the wood. Pole may have lost
the case, for in a similar case six year later, it was stated that he had imparked the same wood
in 1535.122 Several similar cases were from the East Sussex weald, where Ellis Midmore and
a gang of men allegedly damaged park fences or buildings in the 1520s and 30s. Midmore’s
destructive career has been described both by Guy and Manning and so is not retold here.123
A case involving more unusual common rights was that in 1531 concerning the taking of
gulls and other fowl on the cliffs at Eastbourne.124 Four depositions survive, three from 80year-old men and one from a man who had ‘known the cliffs for sixty years’. One stated that
the tenants of the manor of Born had always taken the birds, as the common land stretched
right to the cliff edge. Another seemingly contradicted this, saying that ‘Lord Gage’ and his
ancestors had always taken the birds. A third added that Gage took the hawks and other
fowls. A fourth man was excused being ‘of a very greate age, not able … havyng ony
discrecon to make answer’.
One of the forced marriage cases in Table 3 concerned Mary Trotter, who, aged eleven, was
apprenticed to a silkwoman in London around 1536. Within three months, the woman’s
brother, Harry Redyng, ‘a person of lyght behaviour and lewde demenour’, had taken Mary
away to Hastings and ravished her, after a marriage at an old priory with neither banns nor
licence. Redyng was Town Clerk of Hastings and answered that Mary had asked to be taken
away from London for fear of the plague, and that they had lawfully married although they
had not had intercourse. Several witnesses deposed that Mary was underage, and one that
Redying had admitted that he had lain with Mary with her consent. Mary herself deposed that
she had consented to marry Redying, who had given her a bowed groat and a bracelet of silk
which she still wore on her arm. The case was brought by Mary’s mother and step-father.125
4.3.2 STAC 5 (1559-1603)
Guy writes that under Elizabeth the court changed into a largely criminal court, with title
rarely being at issue.126 I have analysed the descriptions of the 73 Sussex cases which have so
far been included on the TNA spreadsheet. This is probably less than 20% of all Sussex
cases, Knafla having identified 490 for Kent.127 Not all describe a case’s subject, but those
that do are analysed in Figure 14.
122
STAC 2/19/ 337, 20/176, 285; Mundy, Star Chamber Proceedings, pp. 49-50.
Guy, The Cardinal’s Court, pp. 61-2; Roger B Manning, Village Revolts (Oxford, 1988), pp. 47-8.
124
STAC 2/21/240; Mundy, Star Chamber Proceedings, pp. 56-7.
125
STAC 2/3 fols. 152-61, 288 (Barnes v Redyng); Mundy, Star Chamber, pp. 5-8. A bent groat, or other silver
coin, was a token of love sometimes exchanged on betrothal. See, for example, ‘Depositions and other
Ecclesiastical Proceedings from the Courts of Durham extending from 1311 to the Reign of Elizabeth’, The
Publications of the Surtees Society, 21, (1845), p. 238.
126
Guy, The Court of Star Chamber, pp. 52-60.
127
Knafla, KAL Star Chamber, p. xxiii.
123
33
Figure 14. Sussex cases in STAC 5, by subject (n=91, median year 1586)
There was a larger proportion of land cases than in the pre-Elizabethan period. This provides
no overt support for Guy’s hypothesis, although until investigated further differences in the
descriptive methodology cannot be ruled out as accounting for this. It may also be that the
nature of the property-related issues changed over time and related less to title: this is also a
matter for further investigation. Guy does note that by the early Jacobean period, the
allegation of threat or violence necessary to come withing the scope of Star Chamber had
become formulaic and should not necessarily be taken literally (an in-depth investigation of a
case may cast more light on this). The distribution across Elizabeth’s reign of the cases where
the date is given are shown in Figure 15. This is weighted towards the latter part of the reign
where a transition to the formulaic may already have been reflected in the nature of the cases.
Figure 15. Sussex cases in STAC 5 by date (five-year periods). n=89
The distribution is broadly similar to Knafla’s findings for Kent, although is lower between
1590 and 1600, quite possibly due to the small proportion of cases catalogued to date.128
One of the few cases in which the outcome is known is that when several inhabitants of
Chichester brought a case against two magistrates of the city alleging various misdemeanours
in office. The JPs were exonerated, and the plaintiffs fined 200 marks (£133) apiece for
calling the justices’ credit wrongfully into question, being committed to the Fleet until they
128
Knafla, KAL Star Chamber, p. xxiii.
34
paid.129 This was not the only such ‘reverse’ verdict in Sussex, for Thomas Maye similarly
lost a case against Thomas Hepden, having alleged riotous behaviour including leading a man
naked though a Burwash alehouse with a string tied around his ‘privy members’ and baiting
him like a bear.130
The outcomes of some other cases can be deduced from the records of fines paid to the
Exchequer. For example, in 1579, Henry Gratwicke of West Angmering was fined £20 and
another ten men £5 each, including four described as labourers, in a case of forcible entry to a
barn and the theft of corn.131 In 1590, Anthony Kempe esquire was fined £100 for damages in
a case brought by John Mascall originally concerning the entry fine to a copyhold property in
the manor of Slindon, of which Kempe was lord. Star Chamber was at least the fourth court
Mascall had tried, losing at the assizes and being dismissed out of both the Courts of Wards
and Liveries and of Chancery over the previous fifteen or so years. Chancery had concluded
that the entry fine was fair. The Star Chamber case was more narrowly focused on financial
loss incurred when Kemp sent men to prematurely harvest wheat and rye sown by Mascall’s
tenant on the disputed land.132
4.3.3. STAC 8 (1602-40)
For STAC 8 (Jacobean) cases, the higher proportion of land and financial cases is closer to
those of Requests, although still with a larger ‘other’ proportion.
Figure 16. Sussex cases in STAC 8, by subject (n=160, median year 1612)
A more detailed examination of the catalogue entries reveals 31 (out of 115 property cases)
where perjury or fraud is alleged and 32 where assault is mentioned, although as mentioned
above, title may still underlie these cases. Deer are mentioned in 22 cases and rabbits in six, a
higher proportion than seen a century before, suggesting that encroachment by enclosing or
imparking land may have been of growing concern in the county (poaching often being a
reaction to enclosure). Enclosure was only explicitly noted in six entries, however, and in
neither of two poaching cases examined more closely is any mention made by the defendants
129
K. J. Kesselring, Star Chamber Reports, BL Harley MS 2143 (List and Index Society Special Series, 57,
2018), p. 105.
130
William Paley Baildon (ed.), Les reportes del cases in Camera Stellata, 1593 to 1609 from the original ms.
of John Hawarde (London, 1894), p. 81; STAC 5/M40/39, M16/22, M13/6, M13/23.
131
E159/376 Hilary term, 21 Eliz. STAC 7/17/41 and various STAC 5 (Gratwicke v Gratwicke)
132
E159/401 139r; Kesselring, Star Chamber Reports, p. 90; STAC 5/M5/14 and others, C78/71/15 (Mascall v
Kempe).
35
of common rights foregone. The night-time poaching of 1608 in Sir Edward Culpepper’s park
of Wakehurst was well-organised, with deer being driven by dogs into traps or stalls, and the
poachers in Lord Dacre’s park at Heathfield were disguised by painting their faces. In both
cases, some defendants claimed to have offered the landowner twice the value of the venison
taken to avoid being brought to court.133
133
STAC8/197/1 (Lord Dacre v Hessenden and others); STAC 8/111/7 (Culpepper v Jorden).
36
4.4
Exchequer
4.4.1 Analysis of catalogue descriptions of Sussex cases
E133 (‘town’) and E134 (‘country’) depositions (1558 -1647)
Figures 17 and 18 show analysis of the subject matter of the catalogued depositions, after
duplicate entries for the same cases have been removed.
Figure 17. E133 Sussex depositions by subject (1558-1603, median 1588), n=56
Figure 18. E134 Sussex depositions by subject (1570-1647, median 1610), n=98
A larger proportion of the town depositions related to financial cases. This was mainly due to
cases brought by the Crown about rights to income either from land or from other sources.
Only about 5% of country depositions related to Crown cases, the vast majority being for
private prosecutions. However, town depositions were supposedly only required of those who
lived relatively close to London, which would preclude residents of all parts of Sussex. It
may be that many of those deposing at Westminster also had London houses or were willing
to travel – or it may be that there was more pressure to do so in Crown cases. This would be a
useful area for further study.
As might be expected from the nature of the court, the land cases mainly do not concern
inheritance or intra-familial disputes but more general ownership and income entitlement
37
issues, especially on former Crown lands. One such was that in 1637 between Lord Craven
and some of the tenants of his manor of North Bursted, where the interrogatories related to
the sizes of heriots and the rights to timber.134 Many of the financial cases relate to income
sources such as customs duties and tithes. ‘Other’ cases include the illegal export of various
goods such as horses, cloth and grain.
E124 orders (1603-1611)
Of the 145 Sussex orders, 65 are catalogued only as ‘interlocutory order’ (an intermediate
order, often purely procedural, rarely containing much information about a case) and one has
no description. Scrutiny of the remaining 79 orders shows that some cases had multiple
orders, so reducing the total number of cases to 50. Their breakdown by subject matter is set
out in Figure 19.
Figure 19. Sussex cases in E124 by subject (1603-1611). n=50
Compared to the depositions, and to the pleadings and decrees of the other three courts, there
are few purely property cases and a much larger proportion of purely financial and ‘other’
cases. There is no obvious difference in cataloguing practice, making the types of case which
progressed beyond the deposition stage a potential area for further investigation.
E126 orders (1605-1647)
As with E124, there are multiple entries for some cases, so the 28 Sussex entries come from
only 18 cases. Their subject matter is shown in Table 8, which shows a similar distribution to
Figure 19.
Bonds/debt
6
Land
6
Tithes
2
Other
4
TOTAL
18
Table 8. Sussex E126 decrees
by subject (1606-1647) (n=18)
134
E 134/14Chas1/East4 (William, Lord Craven v Thomas White and others).
38
4.4.2 Discussion of Cases
A land case of 1609 provides insight into a residual impact of the Reformation. It concerns
the rent of five tenements in Chichester which formerly belonged to chantries. The tenant of
one of the houses, Richard Page, had paid his rent of 20s as usual to the leaseholder.
However, the leaseholder had paid the rent for all five houses to the Receiver of Revenues for
Sussex rather than to the Bailiff for Chantry Rents. The Bailiff was still being required to
account for the rents so had distrained Page’s goods to the value of 20s (and presumably also
those of the other tenants). The court resolved matters satisfactorily, reviewing documents
from the time of Edward VI in confirming that four of the tenements had belonged to
Arundell’s chantry and one to Stubbard’s chantry, ordering future payments to be made to the
Bailiff and that the leaseholder’s goods should be distrained rather than those of Page.135
Another case, of 1608, illustrates use of the court by manorial tenants to seek protection from
what they saw as unjust financial demands. The former owner of the manor of Parham, Sir
Thomas Palmer, was indebted to the Crown for £80 and the lands of several copyholders and
undertenants had been threatened with seizure by the Sheriff of Sussex, unless they bound
themselves for the value of their land. For various reasons, including the exclusion from
extent of ancient copyholds and that some of the land was not held of the manor, they
requested the court to discharge them from their bonds.136
Some Exchequer debt cases were brought on behalf of the Crown, seeking to recover monies
owed in taxes and duties or on private debts which later fell to the Crown. One such case is
that brought against Sir Thomas Leeds of Wappingthorn, near Steyning. He had originally
owed £800 to Richard Remching, who was subsequently convicted of coining, then an
offence of high treason, for which he was executed in 1598 and attainted.137 Remching’s
debts passed to the Crown. Leeds was originally ordered by the court to pay £800, but
managed to provide evidence that he had paid money to Remching before his death and had
made other payments to the Crown in the late Queen’s time, so reducing his debt to only
£105.138 Richard Snelling, a former Customer of Chichester, was proceeded against by
English bill for concealing duties of £12 on corn exported from Shoreham in the
Bartholomew and from Brighthelmston [Brighton] in the Little Anne (Shoreham, Brighton
and other ports of the south-east coast formally lay within the Port of Chichester at this time).
He refused to submit an answer to a case and was committed to the Fleet prison in late
1606.139 In January 1607, he had still not answered and was ordered to be held a close
prisoner to see if the extra constraints might persuade him to do so.140 Another holder of the
same post, John Young, was also imprisoned, in his case by the marshal of the Exchequer
Court, for non-submission of accounts for several later years of Elizabeth’s reign.141
Collectors of other types of tax were also sometimes in default, as in the case of Robert Casy,
collector of the fifteenths and tenths for the Rape of Chichester in 43 Elizabeth, who was also
held by the marshal and had lands and goods seized in 1606.142 Other tax-related cases
E 124/6 368r, 368v. E 124/8/ 17r, 49r. Chichester Cathedral had had two Arundel chantries. Stubbard’s
chantry is more elusive but may have been in a church near to Chichester.
136
E 124/7 89v. Also E 124/3, 208r, 209r.
137
History of Parliament Online, ‘Thomas Remchinge (Reinchin)’, accessed on 28 Aug. 2021 at REMCHINGE
(REINCHIN), Thomas (-d.1620), of Dale Street, Liverpool, Lancs. | History of Parliament Online
138
E 124/7 89v.
139
E 124/3 90r.
140
E 124/3 219r.
141
E 124/6 300v.
142
E 124/2 142r.
135
39
include an unsuccessful challenge to the water-bailiff of Chichester for charging freemen of
Chichester ½d a quarter mensurage of grain loaded or unloaded in the local harbours and all
others 1d, and Sir Edward Carrell successfully showing that he was not one of the Deputy
Lieutenants who had failed to deliver £28 of tax collected in the county in 44 Elizabeth for
apparel and arms for soldiers sent to Ireland.143
Bonds, and alleged defaults thereon, also provided fruitful grounds for litigation. Two cases
concern port bonds for safe delivery entered into by merchants shipping iron ordnance from
Sussex ports. In 1584 John Harman, merchant of Lewes, bound himself to deliver 7 tons of
ordnance from Newhaven to Plymouth in the Diamond of Lymington and a cargo of cast iron
and ordnance from Newhaven to the Isle of Wight. In 1594 Harman was imprisoned in the
Fleet when the bonds were called, presumably for failing to make the deliveries, but fell sick
and was released on a promise to pay the bond by instalments. However, as the case was still
being pursued in 1610, perhaps he never did.144 Secondly, in 1614 Stephen Aynscombe,
gentleman, and William Oulder, mariner, both of Mayfield, were bound for £250 to deliver
thirty piece of ordnance ‘of the height of mynions and falkons’ from Lewes to London. 145
Again, there appears to have been a problem with the delivery and the bond was forfeit.
However, the Customer of Chichester did not seek to recover it himself, rather he delivered
the bond to the Exchequer, and it was then granted by the Crown to John Frend, Sergeant at
Arms. It was left to Frend to pursue the debt through the court, which instructed the Sheriff of
Surrey and Sussex to levy the £250 on the goods of Aynsecombe. This is an interesting
example of the use of a forfeited bond as currency.
143
E 124/9 11v, 124/6 128r.
E 124/8 323r.
145
E 126/2 103r, E133/8/1180.
144
40
5. Conclusions
People of early modern Sussex used the four Westminster ‘equity’ courts with a broadly
similar frequency and about broadly the same subjects as the country as a whole.
Predominantly the courts, particularly Chancery and Requests, were used to attempt to
resolve local, indeed often intra-family, disputes which could not be adequately addressed by
a local court or by Westminster common law. The majority of these disputes related to land,
with a sizable proportion of the remainder (particularly Exchequer) concerning financial
issues, especially debt. Where social status is identifiable, there is evidence for the use of the
four courts as a vehicle for people to sue their social superiors, providing some rudimentary
refereeing of class conflict and perhaps facilitating a less fractious economic and agricultural
transition in Sussex (and elsewhere) than might otherwise have been the case. However, the
use of all the courts by people of all social statuses to sue those of similar status was most
common, and points to a wider, more conventional role in justice in the county.
A frequent reason to resort to equity was the absence of the necessary documentary evidence
to pursue a suit successfully at common law. Equity courts could compel a party distraining
documents to reveal them or could accept credible witness testimony in lieu. Sometimes,
however, a plaintiff’s knowledge of a deceased relative’s past action was unreliable, and so
cases were regularly dismissed. Other reasons to use these courts identified amongst the
Sussex cases were imbalance of local influence and the inability of common law to respond
equitably to issues with executorships, uses and trusts, admissions to copyholds and manorial
customs. The equity courts did not like being used unnecessarily, and those men presiding
over them frequently dismissed cases to the common law when they considered that it could
deal adequately with the matter, sometimes though with orders helpful to one party or the
other.
Contrary to expectations gained from the literature on the ‘agrarian problem’, very few cases
related to directly to enclosure or were expressions of collective dissent against landlords,
although there were some examples, especially over problems caused by imparking. Tawney
selected three cases to illustrate the early sixteenth century Star Chamber’s approach to
supporting the Henrician administration’s opposition to enclosure and engrossing. All three
cases had tenants and landlords as the opposing parties. However, as the great majority of
cases before Star Chamber, Requests or Chancery did not concern mass actions, it is perhaps
questionable whether those members of Council sitting in judgement on a particular case had
state policy in mind rather simple justice. Indeed, by not including the Ecclesden case, which
is considered by Leadham likely to have upheld the originally agreed land exchanges
between the landlord and tenants, Tawney biased his own small sample.146
Throughout the period, Chancery had the highest proportion of land cases, followed by
Requests. Star Chamber had a number of such cases but was also a vehicle for individuals to
prosecute criminal allegations of a wider nature. Sussex cases brought by government
officials were very much in the minority, with most being brought by private parties, so there
is limited evidence of the court’s use as a means of state enforcement or oppression. The
146
Tawney, The Agrarian Problem, pp. 356-60, citing: STAC 2/13 fols. 83-4 (Inhabitants of Draycott and
Stoke-Gifford v Sir John Rodney); I. S Leadam, ‘The Security of Copyholders in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Centuries’, The English Historical Review, Vol. 8, No. 32 (1893), pp. 687-8; STAC 2/21/109 (?the Abbot of
Peterborough v John Power and others); Leadam, op. cit., p. 690; STAC 2/26/250 (John Mulsho v inhabitants of
Thingdon); Leadam, op. cit., pp. 692-4.
41
impact of the Reformation can be seen in a number of land cases, either in disputes
concerning former ecclesiastical land or that of attained recusants.
Financial cases became more frequent in all the courts in the later sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, supporting Muldrew’s findings noted earlier. Study of these can
provide insights into the ‘culture of credit’, such as common use of credit in trade and
concern to avoid being seen to fail to repay what was due fairly. Evidence of trading practices
also emerge, in shipping (including privateering), iron-founding, timber and in cattle and
grain, the latter two often more localised. Of particular interest are the examples of alleged
dishonesty in office by tax and customs collectors and the interplay between informers and
those trying to evade export restrictions and tariffs.
Many areas have also been revealed for further research, especially amongst the uncatalogued
bundles of Request pleadings and amongst the Exchequer bills, where the Sussex documents
in these archives will, with appropriate normalisation, hopefully serve as a tractable national
proxy.
42
Appendix 1
LAND
rent
enclosure
pond
fishpool
warren
tenant
cliff
ejectment
park
deed
lease
manor
farm
house
marsh
cellar
tenement
messuage
land
meadow
pasture
FINANCIAL
bond
tax
fifteenth
tenth
payment
annuity
arrear
account
statute
subsidy
obligation
money
dues
tax
recognizance
debt
recovery
Table A1. Words searched for in catalogue descriptions
43
List of Tables and Figures
Page
Table 1. Proportions of Chancery complaints by subject matter 1627
9
Table 2. Geographical distribution of equity and common law court cases
11
Table 3. Number of Sussex Chancery pleadings by class (1500-1650)
13
Table 4. Nature of parties in Sussex cases in REQ2 1-136
27
Table 5. Main subject matter of Mundy cases
30
Table 6. Geographical location associated with Mundy cases where given.
31
Table 7. Status of first-named complainant in Mundy cases where given
31
Table 8. Sussex E126 decrees by subject (1606-1647)
38
Table A1. Words searched for in catalogue descriptions
43
Figure 1. Sussex cases in C1 by subject, 1500 -1558
16
Figure 2. Sussex cases in C2 by subject
17
Figure 3. Sussex cases in C3 by subject
17
Figure 4. Sussex cases up to 1650 in C5-C10 by subject
18
Figure 5. Sussex decrees in C78 catalogued on Discovery
18
Figure 6. All decrees in C78 catalogued on Discovery
19
Figure 7. Sussex decrees in C78 catalogued on Waalt
19
Figure 8. Sussex decrees in C78 by year
20
Figure 9. C78 decrees 1541-1650. Five-year moving averages
20
Figure 10. Sussex cases in REQ2 1-424 by subject (c1495-1624)
25
Figure 11. Dates of Sussex cases in REQ2 boxes 137 to 424 31
26
Figure 12. Dates of all cases in REQ2 boxes 137 to 424
26
Figure 13. Sussex cases in STAC 1-4, by subject
30
44
Figure 14. Sussex cases in STAC 5, by subject
34
Figure 15. Sussex cases in STAC 5 by date
34
Figure 16. Sussex cases in STAC 8, by subject (1603-25)
34
Figure 17. E133 Sussex depositions by subject (1558-1603)
37
Figure 18. E134 Sussex depositions by subject (1570-1647)
37
Figure 19. Sussex cases in E124 by subject (1603-1611)
38
45
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