custumal
customal

In many of these senses, its equivalent in the medieval England would be the custumal.

Ultimately, according to Steven Justice, "no form of writing served lordly interests and ideology more surely and directly than the manorial custumal."

A custumal is a medieval English document, usually edited and composed over time, that stipulates the economic, political, and social customs of a manor or town.

Since public business in the Middle Ages was judicial in character, the custumal and the court roll were the principal registers of a medieval borough's administration.

Each manor had its own laws promulgated in a document called the custumal, and anyone in breach of those laws could be tried in a manorial court.

In the 'custumal' of 1285 the tenants were divided into 'free', 'virgaters'(unfreemen owing services as detailed as those of John Marscal) and 'cottars', the landless bulk.

Issuing a custumal for Montgaillard in the Ariege in 1258, the lord provided that 'we enfranchise and manumit all our serfs living in the said village as long as they wish to remain in it.

The custumal, a record of rents and services owed by the tenants to their landlord, combines a local code of laws with an inventory of all resources of the land, from peat fuel, cattle and sheep to shoreline mussels.

In keeping with this, certain monarchs consolidated their kingdoms by attempting to compile custumals that would serve as the law of the land for their realms, as when Charles VII of France commissioned in 1454 an official custumal of Crown law.

Typical of his gentlemanly sense of law, Beaumanoir interpolates into the section Des Semonses of his customal a discourse on permissible and impermissible flight, reminding his readers that those who flee are more likely to be killed than those who stand.