The Rev. William Hudson included a transcription of the Latin
custumal and an English
translation in the compilation of selections from medieval
documents that he and J.C. Tingey edited (The Records of the City of
Norwich, 2 vols., Norwich: Jarrold & Sons, 1906-1910). As a local
vicar and officer of the county archaeological society, Hudson and his
numerous articles and books about medieval
Norwich – beginning with the history of his own parish (St. Peter
Parmentergate) in 1889 and continuing up to his major work compiling
the Records – may be considered part of the tail-end of the
"antiquarianism" whereby enthusiasts, mostly residents, examined
(and sometimes catalogued) the archives of their counties, towns or
villages and used their contents to write local histories. The quality
of the work of these antiquaries, which began in the early modern
period and climaxed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (when
local history became a major enthusiasm) was mixed, although
the historian is nonetheless indebted to these men for drawing attention
to and making more widely available primary sources related to medieval
boroughs, some of which have since been lost. Norwich in particular is a
borough that has been well-served by its antiquaries, and Hudson's work
represents the best of antiquarianism. Indeed, it may be doing Hudson a
disservice to lump him in with mainstream antiquarianism, for he was
trained in history to the postgraduate level, and his work was of such
a learned quality that in many fields of local study he remains the
authoritative source – not least his extensive introduction to the
Records. (On a personal note, Hudson's impressive reconstruction
of the administrative history of medieval Norwich was a factor in
persuading me to focus my own attentions on urban history).
The text of Norwich's medieval custumal is to be found in the Records,
vol.1, pp.132-199. This publication is not, however, available in many
library collections. Consequently, even though I have not examined the
original document myself, I think it worthwhile (not least for purposes of
comparison with the customs of other towns, transcribed or calendared on
this site) to provide a calendar of the Norwich custumal. For the original
text or a precise translation, you should refer to the Records. Here
I provide an abstract of each capitulum, to communicate in (for the most
part) modern English the sense of the chapter.
Hudson found the custumal in a mid-fifteenth century volume of memoranda
known as the Book of Pleas, and this was the version he included in his
publication. Only as the Records was close to completion did
there come to light an older, long-missing volume entitled the
Liber Consuetudinum (Book of Customs – referred to in 1344 as
the "Book of Ancient Usages of the said City") which, from internal
evidence, Hudson deduced to have been written ca.1308, with minor later
additions within the following few years; the custumal – whose primary
focus is legal procedures and regulation of commerce – was the initial and
principal feature of this volume, with various local agreements and national
laws added, which only increase the impression that this may have been
intended as a formal compilation for the reference of city administrators.
Hudson's comparison of the two versions led him to suspect that the later
was not copied directly from the earlier, but probably through an
intermediary copy possibly made (as some medieval memoranda books were)
for the personal reference of an individual city administrator who held
office during the 1330s and '40s. Hudson further believed that the Book
of Customs was itself probably a copy from an even earlier document, and
hypothesised that this version may have been compiled in consequence to
a withdrawal and restitution of the city
liberties in 1285 – as also happened at
Ipswich.
History of
medieval Norwich
