*Apologies for cross-posting*

JUST PUBLISHED, one of England's most important so-far-unpublished medieval manuscripts

'THE ELY COUCHER BOOK, 1249-50. TTHE BISHOP OF ELY'S MANORS IN THE CAMBRIDGESHIRE FENLAND', translated by Edward Miller, and edited by Frances Willmoth and Susan Oosthuizen. Cambridge, Cambridgeshire Records Society. £37.50 (non-members). 

The Ely Coucher Book (ECB) was drawn up for the bishop of Ely in 1249-50 to record information about ‘the advowson of churches, demesnes, meadows, pastures, woods, marshes and fisheries, and regarding knights' fees. Also regarding the assized rents of freemen and others, and regarding the works and customs of those owing labour services’. The manuscript offers a detailed record of demesne and other holdings, tenants, services, rents and further income from the bishop of Ely’s estates in 1249-50, and allows inferences to be drawn from that information: about medieval demography and social structure, for example, or the balance between arable crops and pastoral husbandry. Much is revealed about patterns of settlement and field organisation, land management, and the relics of archaic obligations.

The geographical location of the episcopal manors is only one of the reasons for this document's particular importance to medievalists. Most of the manors were co-terminous with the vills in which they lay. The extents record the character of the landscape, its organisation and the status and obligations of inhabitants within a substantial, cohesive area that extends over most of Cambridgeshire’s peat and silt fens, including large tracts of the island of Ely. Because the same questions were asked on each manor, and the work of collection, recording and analysis was undertakenby a centrally co-ordinated team working to similar standards, within a consistent framework and within a single, relatively brief period of time,the results allow aggregation and comparison of data across a wide area. Together they offer us an opportunity to step into the physical, social and economic landscape of a large region in the middle of the thirteenth century.

The translation published here of the extents for all seventeen of the Bishop’s Cambridgeshire manors is that made by Professor Edward Miller, whose drafts show that he had yet to start the task of preparing his text for publication at the time of his death in 2000. That essential editorial work has been undertaken by Dr Frances Willmoth and Dr Susan Oosthuizen.