Treatises on Manorial Law

Bound manuscript of treatises and lectures on manorial law in England during the 16th century. Contents are listed by title:

• (f.1) What a mannour is;
• (f.5) The Courte Baron;
• (f.21) The forme and manner to kepe any hundred leete courte baron with all prosces, chardges and entries belonging to the same;
• (f.61) Lectura magistri Nicholai Titchborne in interiori Templo, anno Regis Henrici Octavi primo [1509] (8 individual lectures by Nicholas Titchborne, in French);
• (f.90) Prima Lectura Caroli Calthrope, lectoris ibidem termino Trinitatis anno Elizabethae 16 [1574] de tenuris dictis Coppyholdes (27 individual lectures by Charles Calthrop);
• (f.133) Modus tenendi Curiae Baronis;
• (f.178) Coppiholdes (in French);

Sir Charles Calthrop was a lawyer who served under Elizabeth I and James I as Attorney-General in Ireland, from 1584 to 1606. In 1606 he was elevated to the bench of Common Pleas as a junior judge. He died in 1616. In 1635 there was published in London The Relation betweene the Lord of a Mannor and the Coppyholder his Tenant... Delivered in the learned readings of C[harles] C[althrope] indicating a probable teaching or lecturing role not borne out in official papers of his career.

Source: Mary Ann Lyons, 'Calthorpe , Sir Charles (d. 1616)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. By permission of Oxford University Press -- http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4406.

Nicholas Titchborne, also spelled Tichbourn(e) and Tych(e)born(e), was a member of the Inner Temple. He served as auditor of the Treasurer in 1505, 1508 and 1510, as Treasurer in 1517-19, and as Butler for Christmas, 1541-5. His name occurs frequently in the records of the Inner Temple until 1545. It is possible that he is same Nicholas Tycheborne of Hampshire, who was admitted to Magdalen College, Oxford, on 28 July 1482.

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Purchased by the John Rylands Library from the London booksellers P.J. Dobell and A.E. Dobell in May 1915.

Description compiled by Henry Sullivan, project archivist, and John Hodgson, Keeper of Manuscripts and Archives, with reference to:

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article on Charles Calthorpe;
• F.A. Inderwick, The Inner Temple: its early history, as illustrated by its records, 1505-1603 (London: published by order of the Masters of the Bench, 1896);
• A.B. Emden, A biographical register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957-9).

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1928 (English MS 54).