WHY HISTORIANS BELIEVE THAT CUSTOMARY TENANTS NORMALLY PAID FOR THEIR OWN BUILDINGS: A REPLY TO PAMELA SLOCOMBE

摘要

This paper rebuts Pamela Slocombe's suggestion that manorial lords were principally responsible for building the houses of their customary (copyhold) tenants in the later Middle Ages. After briefly reviewing the evidence for landlords' involvement in freeholds, leaseholds and urban buildings, taking note of previous studies of documentation of peasant building, and omitting published manorial accounts that say nothing about buildings, it examines published accounts covering fourteen widely scattered estates to show that normally nothing was spent on customary tenements. Original MS accounts are then analysed to show that lords' expenditure on customary structures was restricted to a small minority of buildings on a minority of manors of a minority of lords, for short periods in the fifteenth century only, and for exceptional reasons.