Protecting the Mauduit Patrimony. Suits and Disputes in Thirteenth-Century Rutland

This article examines how several members of the Mauduit family fought to preserve and sought to enlarge their patrimony at the expense of the richer peasantry in the small Midlands county of Rutland, as well as the complications that could arise as a result of such efforts. The Mauduit men examined here were all chamberlains of the Exchequer; but this office alone did not shield them from the complicated business arrangements characteristic of rural society in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. The richer peasantry, in fact, was more than capable of frustrating Mauduit designs with respect to the consolidation and growth of the family’s landed patrimony. Consequently, this article suggests that to focus exclusively on lordly encroachment on peasant holdings in order to illustrate how local lordships were constructed is to tell only half the story; it is also to privilege the purpose and the format of the documents – the charter, the final concord and the quitclaim – over the social dynamics that made their use necessary in the first place.