Warranty and good lordship in twelfth-century England
Creators: name: Hyams, Paul R.
Publisher: name: California Institute of Technology
Year: 1986

description: Already in the twelfth century, men canvassed different views on
the ways in which they thought lordship ought to be exercised. They
used their picture of how an idealised "Good Lord" -- a familiar label
in later times -- comported himself to assess the treatment they
actually received from their lords. This Good Lordship had both
Positive and Negative aspects: the "good lord" maintained his vassals
in their honours and renounced his right to revoke grants afterwards.
One excellent way to study the pursuit of this double ideal is through
the language of charters, more particularly through the warranty
clauses by which Good Lordship was often implemented. The
transformation of warranty into its familiar Common-Law shape reflects
corresponding and complex changes in both lord-vassal relations and the
role of the King and his justice.

Warranty actually began as a security device, designed to keep men
to their word, and is found used in this sense over wide areas of sub-Carolingian
Europe. It was probably imported to England by the French,
and can be seen in twelfth-century charters progressively superseding
other forms of words to become the classic "guarantee" of Good
Lordship. In this manner it came by 1200 to be virtually equated with
the lordship it had originally been used to enforce. Warranty was
lordship seen from the vassal's point of view, that is, tenant-right.

Despite this origin in very personal relations, warranty probably
always created between the parties' heirs some kind of obligation,
which sharpened and was made infinitely more clear-cut with the
emergence of full legal inheritance rights. Warranty swelled to full
tenant-right, a full guarantee of the Right to Good Lordship.

As the heir's claim grew into an enforceable right of inheritance
through increasing access to remedies by royal justice, and because
such justice tended to strict construction, warranty became a
contractual addition to which claimants had to prove their entitlement.
The narrative of legal change from 1150 argues for gradual evolution
but also suggests 1153-4 8S the decisive turning-point in this
development.

Detailed (sometimes technical) examination of evidence for some
relevant cases, royal writs concerning warranty and the turning-point
of 1153-4 is reserved for three appendixes.
description: The rough draft from which this paper grew was composed at
the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton in 1980 and tested
at the First Cal tech-Weingart Conference in the Humanities the
next year. I completed it during my year as a Sherman Fairchild
Distinguished Scholar at Caltech in 1985. The reactions of Donald
Sutherland and Eleanor Searle at the 1981 conference and of Paul
Brand, Jeffrey Hackney, John Hudson and Steven D. White to
intermediate drafts have all left noticeable impressions on the
present shape of the argument. I am grateful to them all and
especially for those responsible for my fruitful stays in
Princeton and Pasadena. My wife Elaine Marcotte Hyams, as always,
has contributed in many diverse ways.
description: Published - HumsWP-0116.pdf