| Description | This series includes court books, survey, rental and stewards papers relating to the following manors which formed part of the estates of the bishop of Rochester (as lord of the manor):
Borstall (Rochester)
Bromley
Cuxton and Snodland
Halling cum membris Holburgh
Stone (Stone next Dartford)
Trottiscliffe and West Court
Manors are units of landed property with tenants over whom the landlord exercised rights of jurisdiction in a private court. The court books record the every day business of the manor affecting the local community including changes in tenants, the regulation of agricultural affairs, the enforcement of bye-laws about common land, ditches and crops, and labour services, the transfer of land, petty crime and the election of local officials. The survey usually includes a list of the names of the manorial tenants and valuations. The rental is a list of tenants and the rents payable and the stewards papers are the lord of the manor's official's records relating to manorial business.
The records also include some draft presentments (papers submitted by laymen, usually parish churchwardens, which describe difficulties concerning church fabric, churchyard, church fittings, the conduct of clergy, parish officers and parishioners, occurring at specific time before the visitation which was made by the bishop's official) and a citation for a grant of faculty for a pew (a notice of the bishop's permission for church alterations). |