“The old order changes, giving place to the new,”
until at last
“Beyond these voices there is peace.”
Another relic of the old village of Manning Green is the Court Baron, which is still held (how few Londoners know this!) once a year, for the purpose of providing a small but regular income to a relative of the Lord Chancellor. This Court was probably not held before the year 1895, but it is none the less of extreme interest to antiquarians.
The first mention of Manning Green in history is in a letter to Edward Lord Cringle, the pioneer and ally of the beneficent reforms that remain inseparably associated with the name of the eighth Henry. This letter is written from prison by one Henry Turnbull, a yeoman, and contains these phrases:—
“For that very certainly, my good Lord, I never did this thing, no, nor met the Friar nor had any dealing with him. And whatever I did that they say is treason I did it being a simple man, as following the Mass, which I know is welcome to the King’s Majesty, and not knowing who it was that sang it, no, nor speaking to him after, as God knows. And, my dear Lord, I have had conveyed to you, as you know, my land of Horton with the Grey farm and the mere called Foul Marsh or Manning, having neither son nor any other but my own life only, and for that willingly would I give you this land, and so I have done; and, my good Lord, speak for me at Court in this matter, remembering my gift of the land....”
This Turnbull was afterwards executed for treason at Tyburn. There is still a Turnbull in the parish, but as his father’s name was Weissenstein he is very unlikely to have any connection with the original family of yeomen.
The land (if land it could then be called) did not, oddly enough, remain long in the Cringle family. It was sold by Lord Edward to the Carmelites, and on the dissolution of that order was returned by the grateful monarch to its original owner. We next find “Manning” or “Foul Marsh” drained during that period of active beneficence on the part of the great landlords which marked the seventeenth century. We are acquainted of this fact in our agricultural history by an action recorded in 1631, where it appears that one Nicholas Hedon had gone to shoot snipe, as had been once of common right in the manor, and had so trespassed upon land “now drained at his lordship’s charges, and by him enclosed.” Hedon lost both ears, and was pilloried.
Manning is probably alluded to also in a strong protest of the old Liberal blood[12] against ship-money, to which exaction it contributed 1s. 4d. The sum need not excite ridicule, as it represents quite 4s. of our present currency. The vigorous protest of the family against this extortion is one of the finest examples of our sterling English spirit on the eve of the Civil War. The money was, however, paid.
In the troubles of the Civil Wars Manning ( now no longer a marsh, but a green) was sold to John Grayling, but the deed of conveyance being protested at the Restoration, it was restored to its original owners at the intruder’s charge by an action of Novel Disseizin. After Monmouth’s rebellion, Manning was in danger of suffering confiscation, and was hurriedly sold to a chance agent (William Greaves) at so low a price as to refute for ever all insinuations of rapacity upon the part of its now ducal owners. It was happily restored by a grateful nation as a free gift after the glorious Revolution of 1688, and the agent, who had only acquired it by taking advantage of the recent troubles, was very properly punished. King William congratulated the family in a famous epigram, which a natural ignorance of the Taal forbids us to transcribe.