Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies (HALS) have released a vast online resource of documents from their manorial records at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/mdr.

This Hertfordshire Manorial Records Database is not original images or transcriptions, but an index of documents for more than 2000 Hertfordshire manors whose records are held by HALS and other repositories throughout the country. The database now forms part of the main index to the national manorial records of England and Wales maintained by The National Archives at Kew, which provides brief descriptions of surviving documents for various counties in England and Wales, along with details of their locations.

See my Sources for Research page (on the right) for a description of Manor Court Rolls and what you can expect to find in them. They’re fascinating but tricky little (and not so little) things – but bite the bullet and give them a go. You don’t need to know Latin to read the later ones and they have such detailed content, you sometimes almost feel you are in the court (the local inn, most likely) with them, with all the accents, smells, glasses of ale, spectacles perched on noses and farm workers in their smartest clothes . Good luck!