Provenance

This collection of records of proceedings of the court of the manor of Eggington was deposited at Bedfordshire Record Office in November 1963 by Messrs. Lovel Smeathman & Son of Hemel Hempstead who had acted as stewards for the manor. It comprises sixteen parchment membranes numbered X310/1/1-16 and containing a record of 32 courts dated from 1297 to 1572. The membranes have been numbered 1 to 16 and stitched together at the head, but this has been done since their deposit at Bedford. In addition, four paper documents numbered X310/2-6, which are draft records of the court proceedings entered on the membranes numbered 12,14,15 and 16, have been used in connection with the translation and interpretation of the records of the relevant courts.

At one time the collection was definitely associated with papers forming part of the collection of the solicitors Messrs. E. T. Ray of Leighton Buzzard (RY at the Bedfordshire Record Office). The Ray papers (RY 2-99), which include some 17th century extracts made from the rolls, constitute a corpus of material relating largely to the title and administration of the Eggington manorial land, inter alia, in the 17th and 18th centuries. A schedule in the collection lists Court Rolls of the manor of ‘Egginton’ up to 1728 but no ‘roll’ later than 1630 exists in the Ray papers and those brief court records extant from 1578 to 1630 consist of seven small parchment documents forming part of an original file of steward’s papers. Paper drafts of 19 courts held up until 1860, however, exist in the Lovel Smeathman deposit (being catalogued as X310/2-23) along with a sizeable set of rentals of quit rents from 1540/1 up to 1859 (X310/26-48). It may be, on the basis of the evidence of the rolls written up from the paper drafts discussed below, that fair copies were never written up from the drafts after 1572.

Eggington is a small village in the south-west comer of Bedfordshire, near Leighton Buzzard and the Buckinghamshire border. Formerly a hamlet in the ancient parish of Leighton its population in 1801 was 206 and an estimated figure for the late 17th century, based on the Hearth Tax returns, is 115. The earliest reference to the history of the manor of Eggington in the Victoria County History (V.C.H.) dates back only to 1518 when it is recorded as having been in the possession of William Man, which agrees with court 14a in this collection.