The office of coroner was established in the last years of Richard's reign to determine if sudden deaths were accidental or due to murder.
Chief Justice Ranulph Glanville wrote a treatise on the writs which could be brought in the Royal Court and the way they could be used. It was a practical manual of procedure and of the law administered in the Royal Court.
Chapter 7
The Times 1215-1272
Baron landholders' semi-fortified stone manor houses were improved and extended. They were usually quadrangular around a central courtyard. The central and largest room was the hall, where people ate and slept. If the hall was on the first floor, the fire might be at a hearth in the middle of the floor. Sometimes the lord had his own parlor, with a sleeping loft above it. Having a second floor necessitated a fireplace in the wall so the smoke could go up two floors to the roof. Other rooms each had a fireplace. Often the hall was on the second floor and took up two stories. There was a fireplace on one wall of the bottom story. There were small windows around the top story. Windows of large houses were of opaque glass supplied by a glass-making craft. The glass was thick, uneven, and greenish in color. The walls were plastered. The floor was wood with some carpets. Roofs were timbered with horizontal beams. Many roofs had tiles supplied by the tile craft, which baked the tiles in kilns or over an open fire. Because of the hazard of fire, the kitchen was often a separate building, with a covered way connecting it to the hall. It had one or two open fires in fireplaces, and ovens. Sometimes there was a separate room for a dairy.
Furniture included heavy wood armchairs for the lord and lady, stools, benches, trestle tables, chests, and cupboards. Outside was an enclosed garden with cabbages, peas, beans, beetroots, onions, garlic, leeks, lettuce, watercress, hops, herbs, nut trees for oil, some flowers, and a fish pond and well. Bees were kept for their honey.
Nobles, doctors, and lawyers wore tunics to the ankle and an over-tunic almost as long, which was lined with fur and had long sleeves. A hood was attached to it. A man's hair was short and curled, with bangs on the forehead. The tunic of merchants and middle class men reached to the calf. The laborer wore a tunic that reached to the knee, cloth stockings, and shoes of heavy felt, cloth, or perhaps leather. Ladies wore a full length tunic with moderate fullness in the skirt, and a low belt, and tight sleeves. Her hair was concealed by a round hat tied on the top of her head. Over her tunic, she wore a cloak. Monks and nuns wore long black robes with hoods.
The barons now managed and developed their estates to be as productive as possible, often using the successful management techniques of church estates. They kept records of their fields, tenants, services owed by each tenant, and duties of the manor officers, such as supervision of the ploughing and harrowing. Annually, the manor's profit or loss for the year was calculated. Most manors were self-supporting except that iron for tools and horseshoes and salt for curing usually had to be obtained elsewhere. Wine, tar, canvas and millstones were imports from other countries and bought at fairs, as was fish, furs, spices, and silks. Sheep were kept in such large numbers that they were susceptible to a new disease "scab".
Manors averaged about ten miles distance between each other, the land in between being unused and called "wasteland". Statutes after a civil war proscribing the retaking of land discouraged the enclosure of waste land.
Some villeins bought out their servitude by paying a substitute to do his service or paying his lord a firm (from hence, the words farm and farmer) sum to hire an agricultural laborer in his place. This made it possible for a farm laborer to till one continuous piece of land instead of scattered strips.