Naming Individuals
The owner of a lordship of the manor can be described as, Lord/Lady of the Manor of, sometimes shortened to Lord or Lady of . In modern times any person may choose to use a name that is not the property of another. Under English common law a person may choose to be known by any name they see fit as long as it is not done to commit fraud or evade an obligation; such changes are often made by deed poll. John Martin Robinson, Maltravers Herald Extraordinary and co-author of The Oxford Guide to Heraldry, gave his opinion that "Lordship of this or that manor is no more a title than Landlord of The Dog and Duck". A manorial lordship is not an aristocratic title, but a semi-extinct form of landed property. Lordship in this sense is a synonym for ownership, although this ownership involved an historic legal jurisdiction in the form of the Court baron. The journal Justice of the Peace Local Government Law advises that the position is unclear as to whether a lordship of a manor is a title of honour or a dignity, as this is yet to be tested by the courts. Technically, Lords of Manors are barons, or freemen; however, they do not use the term as a title. John Selden in his esteemed work Titles of Honour writes, "The word Baro (Latin for Baron) hath been also so much communicated, that not only all Lords of Mannors have been from antient time, and are at this day called sometimes Barons (as in the stile of their Court Barons, which is Curia Baronis, &c. And I have read hors de son Barony in a barr to an Avowry for hors de son fee) But also the Judges of the Exchequer have it from antient time fixed on them."
Lord Denning, in Corpus Christi College Oxford v Gloucestershire County Council QB 360, described the manor thus:
| “ | In mediæval times the manor was the nucleus of English rural life. It was an administrative unit of an extensive area of land. The whole of it was owned originally by the lord of the manor. He lived in the big house called the manor house. Attached to it were many acres of grassland and woodlands called the park. These were the “demesne lands” which were for the personal use of the lord of the manor. Dotted all round were the enclosed homes and land occupied by the “tenants of the manor”. | ” |
There have been cases where manors have been sold and the seller has unknowingly parted with rights to unregistered land in England and Wales.
Read more about this topic: Lord Of The Manor
Famous quotes containing the words naming and/or individuals:
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)