Studies in Manorial History
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STUDIES IN MANORIAL HISTORY ADA ELIZABETH LEVETT EDITED BY H. M. CAM Fellow and Lecturer of Gzrton College, Cambrzdge M. COATE Fellow and Tutor of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford L. S. SUTHERLAND Fellow and Tutor oJSornermlle College, Oxford PREFACE First ~ublishedin England 1938 by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS F the essays relating to the manors of St. Albans 0 which form the main contents of this volume, the majority represent unpublished papers which came into my hands on the death of my sister, Elizabeth Levett. In view of the fact that they then lacked the necessary final revision and completion in detail, and in the absence of any knowledge of what the author's own wishes would have been, the decision to publish them was not taken without much anxious deliberation. Details of fhe condi- tion in which the papers were left, and of the work which proved necessary to prepare them for the press, will be found in the Editors' Foreword: as to the reasons for ultimately deciding to publish, it is hoped that the book will speak for itself. As an introduction to the volume I have printed also a short Memoir contributed by Miss E. M. Jamison, and the author's own Inaugural Lecture, delivered on her appointment to a Chair of History in the University of London. Publication was made possible by the generosity of Miss H. M. Cam and Miss L. Stuart Sutherland, who have collaborated in completing and editing the essays on St. Albans. It is nobody's business to thank historians for what they do for History; but it should be recorded that this has involved for the Editors a very considerable sacrifice of time in the interests of a piece of work which was not primarily their own. The duller and more un- grateful task of acting as general editor and of seeing the book through the press has been undertaken by Miss M. Coate, who has also contributed the list of Elizabeth Levett's published writings. The book owes much to Miss Coate's constant vigilance in matters of detail, and I wish to express my personal thanks to her for having re- lieved me of the burden of innumerable small transactions vi PREFACE and arrangements which circumstances made it difficult for me to attend to. ADA ELIZABETH LEVETT Finally, I must express my indebtedness to all those zo August 1881--9 December 1932 of my sister's friends and fellow historians, too many to mention by name, who have helped me by careful study DA ELIZABETH LEVETT was born at Bodiam in of the papers in their original form, who guided me in A Sussex on 10 August 1881, the eldest daughter of the difficult first decisions, and who have since allowed Mr. and Mrs. Henry Levett, of High Wigsell, Bodiam, me to consult them frequently and importunately on and there she passed her childhood. Her father's family matters beyond my own competence. For such help had long been settled in the neighbourhood. Its tradi- I owe most to the late Miss M. V. Clarke of Somerville tions were those of outdoor activity, not of scholarship, College, who originally undertook and actually began and towards the end of her life, in an autobiographical the editing of the papers, and to Miss E. M. Jamison, fragment, she set out to consider how it came about on whose wise advice I have constantly relied. that 'a little girl brought up on a big farm in a very isolated country parish should become a Professor of M. J. L. History'. Her intense interest in intellectual study she UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW, attributed partly to short sight, which made many prac- September 1937. tical pursuits difficult . 'Books', she wrote, 'were among the few things I could control . .'; partly also to 'a very acute and sensitive sense of touch', which, being denied the exercise which a training in artistic work might have given it, expressed itself mainly in revulsion from household tasks. Both these characteristics tended to throw her back for aesthetic satisfaction upon litera- ture, of which she had a vivid appreciation. She had in later life a nice sense of the English language, and an unusual sureness and directness in finding the right word and phrase. Her first draft was almost the final one, so definite was her conception of what she wanted to say, and of the just way of saying it. The resource of happy and pointed quotation came to her naturally from the gift of an accurate and retentive memory. But history was always her special interest and delight, and this she attributed to various early influences: a cer- tain puritanical strain in her home background, which discountenanced fairy tales and stressed the value of exact truth (it is recorded that even as a very small child she refused to be told any story that was not true); a .. WII ADA ELIZABETH LEVEn ADA ELIZABETH LEVE'IT ix certain interest in history and the method of teaching it Hall, and this finally made it possible for her to go on the part of her mother; the reading of historical up to Oxford in the next Michaelmas Term. In 1907 novels; and the nearness of Bodiam Castle, in the ruins she attained a brilliant First Class in the Honour School of which she spent hours playing and dreaming. The of Modern History, and in the same summer she was later restriction of access after the castle was restored was given the Gilchrist Studentship, which enabled her to felt by her as a very personal loss. To one who knew spend a year at the Ecole des Chartes at Paris. Her her only after she went to Oxford, it is in truth the up- tutor at Oxford was the late Dr. Eleanor Lodge, who had bringing on 'the big farm' close to the castle that seems herself worked in Paris, and, encouraged by her and other the essential factor in her formation. The immemorial Oxford teachers, she set out on the long road of scholar- antiquity of the Sussex countryside, the age-long life of ship under the direction of Monsieur Elie Berger, Mon- an English country parish were bred into her. She was sieur Charles BCmont, and Monsieur Ferdinand Lot. At naturally at home in the Catholic tradition of the Angli- the same time that she received the technical training of can Church which was always the foundation of her a historian, she learned that love of France which came spiritual life, and of her knowledge of ecclesiastical prac- very close after her love of Sussex and of Oxford, and tice in the past. She was at home, too, in the actual work- led to many vacations spent in travel across the Channel, ing of the land, and this gave her an understanding of studying castles and churches, and delighting in the manorial organization beyond what can be learnt by the beauty of the country. study of court rolls and ministers' accounts. She was a Elizabeth Levett's interests were never exclusively historian born as well as one trained in the severe learn- those of a scholar, and she began her apprenticeship to ing of the schools. the work of teaching and administration on her return When she was fifteen Elizabeth Levett went to a small from Paris. From 19089 she helped to re-classify the private school at Tunbridge Wells, now no longer in exis- Lady Margaret Hall Library and took some pupils in tence. Her education there was not planned to lead to history. After a year's valuable experience as history scholarship, but she had the advantage of an uncrowded mistress at the Edgbaston High School for Girls, an curriculum and of the friendship and teaching of Miss experience which led her to write a notable school- Alice Miller, a woman of intelligence not many years book : Europe Since Napoleon (Blackie, 1g 13), she returned older than herself, to whom she owed much. Together to Oxford in I g10 as Tutor in Modern History at St. they went to the University Extension Courses in Litera- Hilda's College; in 1913 she was appointed Vice- ture and History at Tunbridge Wells. Among the lecturers Principal under Miss C. M. E. Burrows, whose firm was the Rev. W. Hudson Shaw and it was greatly owing friendship she won, and she held the two offices of tutor to his encouragement that she began to think of pursuing and Vice-Principal until 1923. During this period, which the study of history at Oxford. She always recognized included the years of the War and the admission of that his praise of the essays she brought him marked a women to membership of the lJniversity, she was rich turning-point in her life, where the way she was to follow in friends among graduates and undergraduates alike. stretched out clearly before her. Difficulties there were She helped forward the steady growth of St. Hilda's and still to be overcome, financial and otherwise, but in 1904 the consolidation of the new position opened to women, she won the James Cropper Scholarship at Lady Margaret in the University and outside it, by her clear head for X ADA ELIZABETH LEVETT ADA ELIZABETH LEVETT xi business, her wise counsel and her success as a tutor; and and Daniel Defoe, which appeared in the series of she began to be known outside the college as a serious volumes on Social and Political Ideas edited by Professor historian whose work had to be reckoned with. The Hearnshaw 1925-8, show her grasp of the principles of lectures and seminars of the late Sir Paul Vinogradoff in and the two small books, English Economic History the early social and legal history of England attracted (Berm's Sixpenny Library, 1929) and The Consumer in at this time many scholars in Oxford, and to his teaching History (1929), although pamphlets in size, have a lasting Elizabeth Levett owed the definite direction of her value as introductions to the subjects they treat.