The politics of popular memory

Andy Wood

doi:10.1017/CBO9781139034739.008

6 - The politics of popular memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2014

Andy Wood

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Andy Wood: Affiliation:
University of Durham

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Summary

Merry meetings of the neighbours: commensality, remembrance and social exchange

In the opinion of one mid-Tudor surveyor, customary law originated as the gift of the lord, who ‘devised suche customes for his owne tenaunts as to his owne contentacion seemed best’. The anonymous surveyor knew that custom was never static, but he saw its evolution as stemming from the mutual love between lord and tenant. In his account, freehold emerged as the lord granted land on a free rent to ‘sundrye gentlemen and others’. Feeling that he needed ‘others to trava[i]le and tyll the yerth and to use the trade of husbandry for the increase of corne to serve ther owne necessytie, and to be mynysters also to the commonwelthe’, the lord established copyhold tenure, in which rents and dues were paid for a fixed number of lives and labour services performed. The surveyor went on: ‘Theis customes, althoughe they were in some places a hevie burthen, yet the tenaunts received them thanckfullye, and thought yt but ther duetie during ether lyves to serve ther Lorde at all tymes wyth all ther might and power, them selves, ther servaunts, and alle.’ Heriots upon the alienation of land were similarly given freely by tenants to their lord ‘in token of a remembruance and knowleging of ther good will toward ether Lorde’; in return, the lord, was the tenants’ ‘onlye defence and buckler against all men’. When the lord called upon the military services of his tenants, they were delighted to respond:

Suche was the studye and pollycie of our forefathers, to noryshe upp the tenaunts in obedience that they might have ther service in tyme of warr, for the defence of them selves and ther countrye, and in tyme of peace to have them necessarye mynystres in the common welthe, and so get ther lyvinge wyth the travayle of ther bodyes.

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Memory of the People
Custom and Popular Senses of the Past in Early Modern England
, pp. 287 - 340

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139034739.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2013

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