Custumal

A custumal is a medieval English document, usually edited and composed over time, that stipulates the economic, political, and social customs of a manor or town.

The National Archives define custumal as "an early type of survey which consists of a list of the manor's tenants with the customs under which each held his house and lands." Custumals were compiled in Latin, Anglo-French or Law French and sometimes mixed fragments in different languages. They were commonly preceded with a standard formula in French: Ces sount les usages, et les custumes le ques ... (There are the usages and customs of ...). Custumals existed in two distinct forms:

Territories governed by a custumal ranged from a single manor (Custumal of the Manor of Cockerham, 1326–1327) to an assortment of manors under common control (Custumal of Battle Abbey, reign of Edward I) to a whole county. The county-wide Custumal of Kent, written in Anglo-French, codified the unique system of gavelkind in Kent that existed for centuries before its enactment in 1293. The Custumal of Kent has been regularly copied by scribes, who introduced errors and inserted glosses, and printed by Richard Tottel in 1536 and by William Lambarde in 1576. These printed codes are all distinctly different, the three handwritten and two printed copies analyzed by Hull have only nine substantially matching paragraphs (out of thirty-five). Lesser custumals were far more stable: the Custumal of the Manor of Cockerham was properly revised in 1463.

Custumals of large ecclesiastical estates introduced their own systems of grading the tenants. The Custumal of Battle Abbey used four grades:

Custumals provide historians an insight into all significant aspects of everyday life in a manorial estate.Custumals of the Manor of Cockerham, written in Latin in 1326–1327, regulated usage of all resources of the country: peat fuel, salt, sheep, goats, horses, cattle and shoreline mussels. It imposed practical safeguards for preservation of the property: the tenants were obliged to "maintain the dikes of the mill pond so that the pond does not burst for the lack of then". It also set the rules of personal conduct: "no tenant shall call any of his neighbours a thief or a robber under a penalty of 40d. And no tenant shall call any of his neighbours a whore, for a penalty of 12d." Ultimately, according to Steven Justice, "no form of writing served lordly interests and ideology more surely and directly than the manorial custumal."

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