The tidal River Axe in Devon, England

| Thursday February 16, 2012 00:00

The background to this story is that when I was young, my parents lived in a small feudal village in south west England, which was effectively owned by the Lady of the Manor.

Not only did she own all the buildings in the village, which were rented by the occupants from the estate office, but exercised veto rights in respect of the incumbents of the church, the school and the pub.  When I first went to Sweden to stay with Peder Gowenius (of Odi Weavers fame), I startlingly discovered that a very similar situation existed in Gardsby, outside Växjö, where Peder’s mother also exercised such proprietal rights.   The principal difference between the two, as far as I could understand, was that the additional rights at Gardsby pertained to the forest whereas at Axmouth, they pertained to the river.  As indicated by the newspaper clipping taken from the national newspaper, the Daily Mail, the Lady of the Manor in the village of Axmouth not only had all the rights in the village but also controlled the riverís fishing rights. In perhaps the later 1950s/early 60s  (I am still to pin down the date) four fishermen from the nearby small town of Seaton decided that they were no longer prepared to put up with this feudal nonsense.

The river was there and they were adamant that they had a right to fish it.  If the Lady of the Manor chose to take legal action against them, she would be made to regret it. Their legal argument was obviously a winner. They had only to cite Magna Carta which King John had been famously obliged to sign in 1215 and the Lady was done for, and their legal team must have agreed with them.   Magna Carta stated unequivocally that any Englishman can fish in tidal waters. Case over and done with.  Unfortunately the fishermens’ legal experts had not anticipated that the Lady could possibly come up with anything which pre-dated Magna Carta.

 She did, however, and won. I had always believed that the case had been won and lost because she had used the Domesday Book, which was completed in 1086, to knock out the Magna Carta of 1215 but I now find that memory had embellished the story.  But it hardly matters.

The published story does slightly puzzle me, however, because of the reporter’s uncertainty about the identity of the King who gave the Manor the right of, ‘a sole and several fishery’. Seemingly Justice Vaisey of the Chancery Division was disinclined to work out whether it was Henry I who died in 1135 or Henry II who died 44 years later who had given the Manor this right because the evidence before him was sufficient to convince him that whoever it was, this undoubtedly pre-dated Magna Carta.  And that was that!