MANORIAL RECORDS

Introduction

This section of the list brings together the records of the several manors of which members of the Gilbert family were lords or in which they held an interest as lessees.

Also listed here are records of other manors, the lordships of which were never in the hands of the Gilbert family. Most of those documents, which relate to manors which formed part of the Devonshire estate and with tenements in areas in which the Gilbert estate also held land - Eastbourne, Jevington and Pevensey - probably owe their presence in the archive to the period in which Messrs Gell and Sons of Lewes acted as stewards to both estates. The same explanation can be advanced for the presence of a rental of the manor of Lewes Borough, of which Gell was also steward.

Harder to account for is an 18th-century copy, examined by the antiquary William Burrell, of a custumal of the manor of Battle of 1564. Either the document was mistakenly handed on by lawyers who also acted for the Webster lords of Battle, or it was acquired by a member of the Gilbert family out of antiquarian interest.

The records of the Gilbert manors are listed in the order of their acquisition by the Estate. Those relating to income from the undivided portions of the manor of Eastbourne have been placed with those of the hundred of Eastbourne, which was also retained intact when the joint purchasers of 1555 partitioned the manor between themselves in 1574.