Manor of Sewell

Information taken from Victoria County History, Vol. III, 1912.

The property which later became known as the 'manor' of SEWELL has its origin in the 3 hides in Sewell which were in the time of the Confessor in the tenure of Walgrave, a man of Queen Edith, and then formed a part of Odecroft Hundred. These 3 hides were later added to the royal manor of Houghton by Ralph Tallebosc. There is no evidence of a separate 'manor' of Sewell until the 16th century. The lords of Houghton had their gallows at Sewell, and in one of the several compromises made between Hugh de Gurney and the Prior of Dunstable the former gave a hide of land in Sewell to the prior, whereupon the prior claimed a view of frankpledge there in 1330.

The chief tenants of the lords of Houghton in Sewell were the family taking its name from the place. Their name frequently occurs in documents relating to land in the parish, and they appear to have been of considerable importance in the county. In 1302–3 John de Sewell was one of the jurors for the assessment of the hundred of Manshead on the raising of an aid for the marriage of the king's daughter. Nicholas de Sewell, a son of the above, a few years later was slain at Dunstable by John le Mareschal. Another member of the family, Adam de Sewell, was presented to the church of Houghton in 1329, and in a return of the gentry of Bedfordshire in 1433 there appear the names of John and Henry Sewell as residents in Sewell. Henry Sewell's sister and heir married Edmund Dyve. From them the Sewell property passed to William Dyve, who in 1515 endowed a chantry. Sir John Dyve (the relationship is uncertain) became seized of this property in 1530. He died in 1536, and in a document drawn up after his death Sewell is for the first time termed 'a manor.' He left it to his wife for her life, with reversion to his son William. The latter, however, died in the next year, and his mother dying a few months later, the property passed to William's son Lewis, who held it until his death in 1592. His eldest son John did not long survive him, and his second son, Sir Lewis Dyve, a leader of the Royalist party in Bedfordshire, succeeded and sold the manor to his father-in-law, Sir John Strangeways, in 1642. A sum of £3 11s. 2d. was due yearly from the manor to the lord of Houghton Manor, and at the time of the sale money was owing for this rent, a matter which was afterwards the subject of petition. Sewell Manor was confiscated by the Parliament, and bought from them by Dame Joan Fenner, who sold it to Henry Brandreth in 1658. On the Restoration Sir Lewis Dyve suffered a recovery of the manor. He appears to have made some compromise with Henry Brandreth, and the same year, acting together, they placed the manor in the hands of John Fisher and Henry Parr. It would appear to have been leased for the next twenty years by Richard Eccles, a member of a family long resident at Sewell, but before the end of the century Nehemiah Brandreth, son of Henry Brandreth, had resumed possession. The further history of this manor is the same as that of the main manor of Houghton.