Welsh Journals

Manor Court Records and the Historian: Penmark, Fonmon, and Barry, 1570-1622 Matthew Griffiths "Good cosen, I fynde by the making of the strets of my courts as also by the small profittes that riseth upon the same, and upon divers other intelligences, that your understeward is a man very unhable to serve in that place to governe such a greate nomber of rude and frowarde people as appeareth before him at every courte and leete, which doth require great government and skill in leaminge to bringe my tenantes to good order. Thus wrote Oliver StJohn, lord St John ofBletsoe, Bedfordshire, to Sir Edward Stradling of St Donats, high steward of his Welsh estates, in November 1578[1]. Sir Edward was appointed steward by Oliver St John in June 1575, on the retirement of Thomas Carne[2], and continued in that office until 1587. The 36 letters in the Stradling Correspondence between Oliver St John, John St John, his son, and Sir Edward, run from 1574 until 1592, and form a detailed commentary, not only on the relationships between resident and non-resident Glamorganshire landlords, but on the most comprehensive set of manor court records to survive for the county in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. This paper investigates the operations of the manor court held at Penmark for the three manors of Penmark, Fonmon and Barry, and the role the court played in the lives of the inhabitants of the St John estates; it explores the usefulness of manor court records for the local historian; and it considers the evidence presented by the records of this particular court of the relationship between lord and tenant in the early modern Vale of Glamorgan.