King's Manor, Southwark

The King's Manor - formally 'The City of London’s King's Manor of the Town and Borough of Southwark' - is an institution of the City of London which is not a Livery Company as it is territorially rather than trade based, being the organisation of the Juror freemen of the Court Leet. The Manor covers the area from the western-side of Borough High Street, Southwark, to the borders of Newington and Lambeth. The manor originally lay in Surrey.

The City of London acquired the ‘borough of Southwark’ from the Crown in 1327, nicknamed the 'Guildable Manor' since 1377. In 1550 the City purchased from Edward VI's government the manors to the south of this on the west and the east of the high street. The City's royal charter of 1550 makes difficult reading because the three manors being described are referred to as 'The Town and Borough of Southwark' (Guildable), 'Our Lordship and Manor of Southwark' (King's) and 'Our Manor and Borough of Southwark' (Great Liberty), all three together are termed ‘The Borough and Town of Southwark and all of its parishes and precincts aforesaid’ (all text in Latin). Today the City officers refer to the three manors as the 'Town and Borough of Southwark', as stated on the Courts Leet summons, on which none of the nicknames appear.

At the time of Domesday Book in 1086 the Southwark and Bermondsey areas were owned by the king and by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the latter’s holding was the manor along the eastern side of the high street. The king owned the northern bridge-head or borough area and the land on the western side of the highway, over to Lambeth and also the areas of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe to the east of the Canterbury manor.

Before Henry VIII acquired the manor in 1536 it belonged to Bermondsey Abbey. A fascinating early plan-map, discovered in the Duchy of Lancaster archive, shows Southwark at some point between the Dissolution and the 1550 charter. Perhaps it was prepared with reference to the jurisdictional disputes with the king’s agents, the City and its manor of the Guildable, as the boundary points are shown on it. A date of 1543 has been assigned to this. On this plan the City’s manor at the northern end of the high street is called ‘the lyberte off the mayre. The later nicknames 'King's manor', and occasionally the 'Queen's manor', for the western Bermondsey Abbey manor, are used only after the crown had sold it to the City; the nickname probably derives from the prominent royal mansion/ mint there; Henry VIII only held it from 1536. This western manor area is delineated, ambiguously, as the liberte off the manor. In fact the plan refers to the eastern manor acquired from Canterbury, the so called ‘Great Liberty’, as the kynges lyberte. In John Silvester's (Recorder~High Steward in 1807) notes and procedures of the Southwark manors he also uses the abbreviations of the borough for the Guildable, the manor for the King's and the liberty for the Great Liberty.

...
Wikipedia