1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Manor
MANOR. Any definition of a manor, in land tenure, must take note of two elements—economic and political. The manor has an estate for its basis, although it need not coincide with an estate, but may be wider. It is also a political unit, a district formed for purposes of government, although the political functions made over to it may greatly vary. As a lordship based on land tenure, the manor necessarily comprises a ruler and a population dependent on him, and the characteristic trait of such dependence consists not in ownership extending over persons, as in slave-holding communities, nor in contractual arrangements, as in a modern economic organization, but in various forms and degrees of subjection, chiefly regulated by custom. In the sense mentioned the manor is by no means a peculiarly English institution; it occurs in every country where feudalism got a hold. Under other names we find it not only in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, but also, to a certain extent, in the Byzantine Empire, Russia, Japan, &c. It is especially representative of an aristocratic stage in the development of European nations. When tribal notions and arrangements ceased to be sufficient for upholding their commonwealths, when social and political life had to be built up on the basis of land-tenure, the type of manorial organization came forward in natural course. It was closely connected with natural economy, and was suited to a narrow horizon of economic wants and political requirements. At the same time it provided links for a kind of national federation of military estates. We shall only speak of the course of manorial evolution in France and Germany, because this presents the clearest expression of the fundamental principles of manorial life and the best material for comparison with English facts.
One problem common to the entire European world has to be considered from the very beginning. Does the manor date from the Roman Empire, or not? Can its chief features be traced in Roman institutions? There can be no doubt that at the end of the Roman period certain traits are noticeable which might, under favourable conditions, develop into a manorial combination. Great estates with political functions, populations subjected to the political lordship of landowners, appear in the closing centuries of the empire, and have to be reckoned with as precursors of medieval manorial life. The original organization of the ancient world was built up on the self-government of cities and on the sharp distinction between citizens and slaves. Both features were gradually modified by the Roman Empire. Self-government was atrophied by bureaucratic interference; the economy based on the exploitation of slaves began to give way before relations in which the elements of freedom and serfdom were oddly mixed. During the last centuries of its existence the Western Empire became more and more a conglomerate of barbaric and half-civilized populations, and it is not strange that the characteristic germs of feudalism began to show themselves within its territory as well as outside it. As far as political institutions are concerned, we notice that the central power, after claiming an absolute sway over its subjects, is obliged more and more to lean on private forces in order to maintain itself. One of its favourite resources in the 4th and 5th centuries consists in making great landowners responsible for the good behaviour of their tenants and even of their less important neighbours. The saltus, the great domain, is occasionally recognized as a separate district exempt from the ordinary administration of the city, subordinated to its owner in respect of taxes and police. Even in ordinary estates (fundi) there is a tendency to make the landowner responsible for military conscription, for the presentation of criminals to justice. On the other hand the incumbents of ecclesiastical offices are nominated in accordance with the wishes of patrons among the landowners; in the administration of justice the influence of this same class makes itself felt more and more. Nor are signs of a convergent evolution wanting on the economic side. Slaves are used more and more as small householders provided with rural tenements and burdened with rents and services. Free peasant farmers holding by free agreement get more and more reduced to a status of half-free settlers occupying their tenancies on the strength of custom and traditional ascription to the glebe. Eventually this status is recognized as a distinct class by imperial legislation. Ominous symptoms of growing political disruption and of an aristocratic transformation of society were visible everywhere at the close of the empire. Yet there could be no talk of a manorial system as long as the empire and the commercial intercourse protected by it continued to exist.
The fall of the empire hastened the course of evolution. It brought into prominence barbaric tribes who were unable to uphold either the political power or the economic system of the Romans. The Germans had from old certain manorial features in the constitution of their government and husbandry. The owner of a house had always been possessed of a certain political power within its precincts, as well as within the fenced area surrounding it: the peace of the dwelling and the peace of the hedged-in yard were recognized by the legal customs of all the German tribes. The aristocratic superiority of warriors over all classes engaged in base peaceful work was also deeply engraved in the minds of the fighting and conquering tribes. On the other hand the downfall of complicated forms of civilization and civil intercourse rendered necessary a kind of subjection in which tributary labourers were left to a certain extent to manage their own affairs. The Germanic conqueror was unable to move slaves about like draughts: he had no scope for a complicated administration of capital and work. The natural outcome was to have recourse to serfdom with its convenient system of tribute and services.
But, as in the case of the Roman Empire, the formation of regular manors was held back for a time in the early Germanic monarchies by the lingering influence of tribal organization. In the second period of medieval development in continental Europe, in the Carolingian epoch, the features of the estate as a political unit are more sharply marked. Notwithstanding the immense efforts of Charles Martel, Pippin and Charlemagne to strengthen the tottering edifice of the Frankish Empire, public authority had to compromise with aristocratic forces in order to ensure regular government. As regards military organization this is expressed in the recognition of the power of seniores, called upon to lead their vassals in the host; as regards jurisdiction, in the increase of the numbers of commended freemen who seek to interpose the powerful patronage of lay and secular magnates between themselves and the Crown. Great estates arose not only on the lands belonging to the king, but on that of churches and of lay potentates, and the constitution of these estates, as described for instance in the Polyptique of St Germain des Près or in the “Brevium exempla ad describendas res ecclesiasticas et fiscales” (Capitularia, ed. Boretius, i. 250), reminds us forcibly of that of later feudal estates. They contain a home-farm, with a court and a casa indominicata, or manor-house, some holdings (mansi) of free men (ingenuiles), of serfs (serviles), and perhaps of half-free people (lidiles). The rents and services of this dependent population are stated in detail, as in later custumals, and there is information about the agricultural implements, the stores and stock on the home-farm. Thus the economic basis of the manor exists in more or less complete order, but it cannot be said as yet to form the prevailing type of land tenure in the country. Holdings of independent free men and village organizations of ancient type still surround the great estates, and in the case of ecclesiastical possessions we are often in a position to watch their gradual extension at the expense of the neighbouring free settlers, by way of direct encroachment, and by that of surrender and commendation on the part of the weaker citizens. Another factor which plays a great part in the gradual process of infeudation is the rise of private jurisdictions, which falls chiefly into the 10th and 11th centuries. The struggle against Northmen, Magyars and Slavs gave a crowning touch to the process of localization of political life and of the aristocratic constitution of society.
In order to describe the full-grown continental manor of the 11th century it is better to take French examples than German, Italian or Spanish. Feudalism in France attained the greatest extension and utmost regularity, while in other European countries it was hampered and intermixed with other institutional features. The expression best corresponding to the English “manor,” in the sense of an organized district, was seigneurie. Manoir is in use, and is, of course, a French word corresponding to manerium, but it meant strictly “mansion” or chief homestead in France. Baronie is another term which might be employed in some instances as an equivalent of the English manor, but, in a sense, it designates only one species of a larger genus, the estate of a full baron in contrast to a mere knight’s fee, as well as to a principality. Some of the attributes of a baron are, however, typical, as the purest expression of manorial rights, and may be used in a general characterization of the latter.
The seigneurie may be considered from three points of view—as a unit of administration, as an economic unit, and as a union of social classes.
(a) In principle the disruption of political life brought about by feudalism ought to have resulted in the complete administrative independence of the manor. Chaque baron est souverain dans sa baronie is a proverb meant to express this radical view of manorial separatism. As a matter of fact this separatism was never completely realized, and even at the time of the greatest prevalence of feudalism the little sovereigns of France were combined into a loose federation of independent fiefs. Still, the proverb was not a mere play of words, and it took a long time for the kings of France to break in potentates, like the little Sire de Coucy in the immediate vicinity of Paris, who sported in his crest the self-complacent motto: Je ne suis ni comte, ni marquis, je suis le sire de Coucy. The institutional expression of this aspect of feudalism in the life of the seigneurie was the jurisdiction combined with the latter. The principal origin of this jurisdiction was the dismemberment of royal justice, the acquisition by certain landowners of the right of holding royal pleas. The assumption of authority over public tribunals of any kind was naturally considered as equivalent to such a transmission of royal right. But other sources may be noticed also. It was assumed by French feudal law that in all cases when land was granted by a seigneur in subinfeudation the recipients would be bound to appear as members of a court of tenants for the settlement of conflicts in regard to land. A third source may be traced in the extension of the patrimonial justice of a person over his serfs and personal dependents to the classes of free and half-free population connected with the seigneurie in one way or another. There arose in consequence of these assumptions of jurisdiction a most bewildering confusion of tribunals and judicial rights. It happened sometimes that the question as to who should be the judge in some particular contest was decided by matter-of-fact seizure—the holder of pleas who was the first on the spot to proclaim himself judge in a case was deemed entitled to jurisdiction. In other cases one seigneur held the pleas in a certain place for six days in the week, while some competitor of his possessed jurisdiction during the seventh. A certain order was brought into this feudal chaos by the classification of judiciary functions according to the four categories of high, middle, low and tenurial justice. The scope of the first three subdivisions is sufficiently explained by their names; the fourth concerned cases arising from subinfeudation. As a rule the baron or seigneur sat in justice with a court of assessors or peers, but the constitution of such courts varied a great deal. They represented partly the succession of the old popular courts with their scabini, partly courts of vassals and tenants. In strict feudal law an appeal was allowed from a lower to a higher court only in a case of a denial of justice (dénie de justice), not in error or revision of sentence. This rule was, however, very often infringed, and gave way ultimately before the restoration of royal justice.
(b) The economic fabric of the French seigneurie varied greatly, according to localities. In the north of France it was not unlike that of the English manor. The capital messuage, or castle, and the home-farm of the lord, were surrounded by dependent holdings, censives, paying rent, and villein tenements burdened with services. Between these tenancies there were various ties of neighbourhood and economic solidarity recalling the open-field cultivation in England and Germany. When the harvest was removed from the open strips they returned to a state of undivided pasture in which the householders of the village exercised rights of common with their cattle. Wild pasture and woods were used more or less in the same fashion as in England (droit de pacage de vaine pâture). The inhabitants often formed courts and held meetings in order to settle the by-laws, and to adjudicate as to trespasses and encroachments (courts colongères). In the south, individual property was more prevalent and the villagers were not so closely united by ties of neighbourhood. Yet even there the dependent households were arranged into mansi or colonicae, subjected to approximately equal impositions in respect of rents and services. In any case the characteristic dualism of manorial life, the combined working of a central home-farm, and of its economic satellites providing necessary help in the way of services, and contributing towards the formation of manorial stores, is quite as much a feature of French as of English medieval husbandry.
(c) The social relations between the manorial lord and his subjects are marked by various forms of the exploitation of the latter by the former. Apart from jurisdictional profits, rents and agricultural services, dues of all kinds are exacted from the rural population. Some of these dues have to be traced to servile origins, although they were evidently gradually extended to groups of people who were not descended from downright serfs but had lapsed into a state of considerable subjection. The main morte of rustic tenants meant that they had no goods of their own, but held movable property on sufferance without the right of passing it on to their successors. As a matter of fact, sons were admitted to inheritance after their fathers, and sometimes succession was extended to other relatives, but the person taking inheritance paid a heavy fine for entering into possession, or gave up a horse, an ox, or some other especially valuable piece of property. The formariage corresponded to the English merchetum, and was exacted from rustics on the marriage of their daughters. Although this payment assumed very different shapes, and sometimes only appeared in case consorts belonged to different lords, it was considered a badge of serfdom. Chevage (capitagium) might be exacted as a poll-tax from all the unfree inhabitants of a seigneurie, or, more especially, from those who left it to look for sustenance abroad. The power of the lord as a landowner was more particularly expressed in his right of pre-emption (retrait seigneurial), and in taxes on alienation (lods et ventes). As a person wielding political authority, a kind of sovereignty, the lord enjoyed divers rights which are commonly attributed to the state—the right of coining money, of levying direct taxes and toll (tallagium, tolneta) and of instituting monopolies. These latter were of common occurrence, and might take the shape, for instance, of forcing the inhabitants to make use of the lord’s mill (moulin banal), or of his oven (four banal), or of his bull (taureau banal).
In Germany the history of the manorial system is bound up with the evolution of the Grundherrschaft (landlordship) as opposed to Gutsherrschaft (estate-ownership). The latter need not include any elements of public authority and aristocratic supremacy: the former is necessarily connected with public functions and aristocratic standing. The centre of the Grundherrschaft was the Hof, the court or hall of the lord, from which the political and economic rights of the lord radiated. The struggle of the military aristocracy and of ecclesiastical institutions with common freedom was more protracted than in France or England; the lordships very often took the shape of disparate rights over holdings and groups of population scattered over wide tracts of country and intermixed with estates and inhabitants subjected to entirely different authority. Therefore the aspect of German manorialism is more confused and heterogeneous than that of the French or English systems. One remarkable feature of it is the consistent separation of criminal justice from other kinds of jurisdiction on Church property. Episcopal sees and abbeys delegated their share of criminal justice to lay magnates in the neighbourhood (Vogtei), and this division of power became a source of various conflicts and of many entangled relations. The main lines of German manorialism are not radically different from those of France and England. The communal element, the Dorfverband, is usually more strongly developed than in France, and assumes a form more akin to the English township. But there were regions, e.g. Westphalia, where the population had settled in separate farms (Hofsystem), and where the communal solidarity was reduced to a union for administrative purposes and for the use of pasture.
It need hardly be added that every step in the direction of more active economic intercourse and more efficient public authority tended to lessen the influence of the manorial system in so far as the latter was based on the localization of government, natural husbandry and aristocratic authority.
See Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions de la France, especially the volumes “L’Alleu et le domaine rural” and “L’Invasion germanique”; Beaudouin, “Les Grands domaines dans l’empire romain” (Nouvelle revue de droit français et étranger, 1898); T. Flach, Les Origines de l’ancienne France, I., II., III. (1886); Paul Viollet, Histoire des institutions de la France, I., II. (1890, 1898); A. Luchaire, Manuel des institutions françaises (1892); G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, I.-VIII. (1865–1883); K. T. von Inama-Sternegg, Deutsche Wirtschaftsgeschichte, I., II. (1879–1891); K. Lamprecht, Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben, I.-IV. (1885); A. Meitzen, Ansiedelungen, Wanderungen und Agrarwesen der Völker Europas, I.-IV. (1895 ff.); W. Wittich, Die Grundherrschaft in Nordwestdeutschland (1896); G. F. von Maurer, Geschichte der Mark-, Dorf- und Hofverfassung in Deutschland; and F. Seebohm, The English Village Community (1883). (P. Vi.)
The Manor in England.—It will be most convenient to describe a typical English manor in its best known period, the 13th century, and to indicate briefly the modifications of the type which varying conditions may produce. Topographically such a manor consisted partly of the houses of the inhabitants more or less closely clustered together, and surrounded by arable land divided into large fields, two or three in number. Each of these fields was divided again into shots or furlongs, and each of the shots was broken up into cultivated strips a pole wide, each containing an acre, separated by narrow balks of turf. There were also certain meadows for supplying hay; and beyond the cultivated land lay the wood and waste of the manor. Portions of arable or meadow land might be found apart from the organization of the remainder; the lord of the manor might have a park, and each householder a garden, but the land of the manor was the open fields, the meadows and the wastes or common. The condition of the inhabitants of such a manor is as complex as its geography. At the head of the society came the lord of Rights of Lord and Tenants. the manor, with his hall, court, or manor-house, and the land immediately about it, and his demesne both in the fields and in the meadow land. The arable demesne consisted of certain of the acre strips lying scattered over the various furlongs; his meadow was a portion assigned to him each year by the custom of the manor. He had also rights over the surrounding waste paramount to those enjoyed by the other inhabitants. Part of his demesne land would be granted out to free tenants to hold at a rent or by military or other service; part would be in the lord’s own hands, and cultivated by him. Each part so granted out will carry with it a share in the meadow land and in the profits of the waste. These rights of the free tenants over the waste limited the lord’s power over it. He could not by enclosure diminish their interest in it. The statute of Merton in 1236 and the second statute of Westminster in 1285 marked the utmost limit of enclosure allowed in the 13th century. Below the lord and the free tenants came the villeins, natives, bondmen, or holders of virgates or yard-lands, each holding a house, a fixed number of acre strips, a share of the meadow and of the profits of the waste. The number of strips so held was usually about thirty; but virgates of fifteen acres or even eighty are not unknown. In any one manor, however, the holdings of all the villeins were equal. Rights of Villeins. Normally the holder of a virgate was unfree; he had no rights in the eye of the law against his lord, who was protected from all suits by the exceptio villenagii; he could not without leave quit the manor, and could be reclaimed by process of law if he did; the strict contention of law deprived him of all right to hold property; and in many cases he was subject to certain degrading incidents, such as merchet (merchetum), a payment due to the lord upon the marriage of a daughter, which was regarded as a special mark of unfree condition. But there are certain limitations to be made. Firstly, all these incidents of tenure, even merchet, might not affect the personal status of the tenant; he might still be free, though holding by an unfree tenure; secondly, even if unfree, he was not exposed to the arbitrary will of his lord but was protected by the custom of the manor as interpreted by the manor court. Moreover, he was not a slave, he was not bought and sold apart from his holding. The hardship of his condition lay in the services due from him. As a rule a villein paid for his holding in money, in labour and in kind. In money he paid, firstly, a small fixed rent called rent of assize; and, secondly, dues under various names, partly in lieu of services commuted into money payments, and partly for the privileges and profits enjoyed by him on the waste of the manor. In labour he paid more heavily. Week by week he had to come with his own plough and oxen to plough the lord’s demesne; when ploughing was done he had to harrow, to reap the crops, to thresh and carry them, or do whatever might be required of him, until his allotted number of days labour in the year was done. Beyond this his lord might request of him extra days in harvest or other seasons of emergency, and these requests could not be denied. Further, all the carriage of the manor was provided by the villeins, even to places as much as a hundred miles away from the manor. The mending of the ploughs, hedging, ditching, sheepshearing and other miscellaneous work also fell upon him, and it is sometimes hard to see what time remained to him to work upon his own holding. In kind he usually rendered honey, eggs, chickens and perhaps a ploughshare, but these payments were almost always small in value. Another class of inhabitants remains to be mentioned—the Cotters. cotters. These are the poor of the manor, who hold a cottage and garden, or perhaps one acre or half an acre in the fields. They were unfree in condition, and in most manors their services were modelled upon those of the villeins. From their ranks were usually drawn the shepherd of the manor, the bee-keeper and other minor officials of the manor.
A complicated organization necessarily involves administrators. Just as the services of the tenants and even their names vary from manor to manor, so does the nature of the staff. Highest in rank came the steward; he was attached to no manor in particular, but controlled a group, travelling from one to another to take accounts, to hold the courts, and generally Staff. represent the lord. Under him are the officers of the several manors. First came the bailiff or beadle, the representative of the lord in the manor; his duty was to collect the rents and services, to gather in the lord’s crops and account for the receipts and expenditure of the manor. Closely connected with him was the “messor” or reaper; in many cases, indeed, “reaper” seems to have been only another name for the bailiff. But the villeins were not without their own officer, the provost or reeve. His duty was to arrange the distribution of the services due from the tenants, and, as their representative, to assist the bailiff in the management of the manor. Sometimes the same man appears to have united both offices, and we find the reeve accounting to the lord for the issues of the manor. To these important officials may be added a number of smaller ones, the shepherd, the swineherd, the beekeeper, the cowherd, the ploughman and so on, mostly selected from the cotters, and occupying their small holdings by the services expressed in their titles. The number varies with the constitution and needs of each estate, and they are often replaced by hired labour.
The most complicated structure in the system is the manor court. The complication is, indeed, partly the work of lawyers interpreting institutions they did not understand by formulae not adapted to describe them. But beyond this there remain the facts that the court was Manor Court. the meeting-point of the lord and the tenants both free and unfree, that any question touching on the power and constitution of the court was bound to affect the interests of the lord and the tenants, and that there was no external power capable of settling such questions as did arise. Amid this maze a few clear lines can be laid down. In the first place, so far as the 13th century goes, all the discussion that has collected about the terms court leet, court baron and court customary may be put aside; it relates to questions which in the 13th century were only just emerging. The manor court at that date exercised its criminal, civil, or manorial jurisdiction as one court; its names may differ, the parties before it may be free or unfree, but the court is the same. Its president was the lord’s steward; the bailiff was the lord’s representative and the public prosecutor; and the tenants of the manor, both free and unfree, attended at the court and gave judgment in the cases brought before it. To modern ears the constitution sounds unfamiliar. The president of the court settled the procedure of the court, carried it out, and gave the final sentence, but over the law of the court he had no power. All that is comprised in the word “judgment” was settled by the body of tenants present at the court. This attendance was, indeed, compulsory, and absence subjected to a fine any tenant owing and refusing the service known as “suit of court.” It may be asked who in these courts settled questions of fact. The answer must be that disputed questions of fact could only be settled in one way, by ordeal; and that in most manorial courts the method employed was the wager of law. The business of the court may be divided into criminal, manorial and civil. Its powers under the first head depended on the franchises enjoyed by the lord in the particular manor; for the most part only petty offences were triable, such as small thefts, breaches of the assize of bread and ale, assaults, and the like; except under special conditions, the justice of great offences remained in the king. But offences against the custom of the manor, such as bad ploughing, improper taking of wood from the lord’s woods, and the like, were of course the staple criminal business of the court. Under the head of manorial business the court dealt with the choice of the manorial officers, and had some power of making regulations for the management of the manor; but its most important function was the recording of the surrenders and admittances of the villein tenants. Into the history and meaning of this form of land transfer it is not necessary to enter here. But it must be noted that the conveyance of a villein’s holding was effected by the vendor surrendering his land to the lord, who thereupon admitted the purchaser to the holding. The same procedure was employed in all cases of transfer of land, and the transaction was regularly recorded upon the rolls of the court among the records of all the other business transacted there. Finally, the court dealt with all suits as to land within the manor, questions of dower and inheritance, and with civil suits not connected with land. But it need hardly be said that in an ordinary rural manor very few of these would occur.
It will be clear on consideration that the manor court as here described consisted of conflicting elements of very different origin and history. Founded partly on express grants of franchises, partly on the inherent right of a feudal lord to hold a court for his free tenants, partly on the obscure community traceable among the unfree inhabitants of the manor, it is incapable of strict legal definition. All these elements, moreover, contain in themselves reasons for the decay which gradually came over the system. The history of the decay of the manorial jurisdictions in England has not yet been written. On the one hand were the king’s courts, with new and improved processes of law; on the other hand the gradual disintegration which marks the history of the manor during the 14th and 15th centuries. The criminal jurisdiction was the first to disappear, and was closely followed by the civil jurisdiction over the free tenants; and in modern times all that is left is the jurisdiction over the customary tenants and their holdings, and that in an attenuated form.
A few words must be given to the legal theories of the 15th century on the manor court. It would seem to have become the law that to the existence of the manor two courts were necessary—a court customary for customary tenants, and a court baron for free tenants. In the court customary the lord’s steward is the judge; in the court baron the freeholders are the judges. If the freeholders in the manor diminish to less than two in number the court baron cannot be held, and the manor perishes. Nor can it be revived by the grant of new freehold tenures, because under the statute of Quia Emptores such new freeholders would hold not of the lord of the manor, but of his lord. The customary tenants and the court customary may survive, but the manor is only a reputed manor. Of the 13th century all this is untrue, but even at that date the existence of free tenants was in a measure essential to the existence of the manor court. If there were none the jurisdiction of the court over free tenants of course collapsed; but in addition to this the lord also lost his power of exercising the highest criminal franchises, even if he otherwise possessed them; he could, for instance, no longer hang a murderer on his own gallows. Perhaps it may be said that to the exercise of the feudal power and of the royal franchises the presence of free tenants was necessary. But it is clear that no such condition was necessary to the existence of the manor.
Apart from the change in the court of the manor, the most important thread in its history is the process which converted the villein into the copyholder. Here again the subject is imperfectly explored, and part of it is still subject to controversy. In the strict view of contemporary lawyers the holding of the villein tenant of the 13th century was at the will of the lord, and the king’s courts of law would not protect him in his possession. If, however, the villein were a tenant on the king’s ancient demesne his condition was improved. The writs of monstraverunt and the little writ of right close protected him from the improper exaction of services and from ejection by the lord. But in ordinary manors there was no such immunity. That ejection was common cannot be believed, but it was legally possible; and it was not until the well-known decision of Danby, C. J., and Bryan, C. J., in 7 Edw. IV., that the courts of law would entertain an action of trespass brought against his lord by a customary tenant. From that date the courts, both of law and equity, begin to intervene; and the records of the Courts of Star Chamber and Requests show that in the Tudor period equitable suits brought by tenants against their lords are not infrequent. Side by side with the alteration in the legal condition of the manor there went on an economic change. The labour rents and other services slowly disappeared, and were replaced by money payments. The field divisions gave way before inclosures, effected sometimes by the lords and sometimes by the tenants. Change in legal and agricultural practice went on side by side, and finally the manor ceased to be an important social form, and became only a peculiar form of land tenure and the abode of antiquarian curiosities.
See G. L. von Maurer, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Hof-, Mark-, Dorf- und Stadtverfassung in Deutschland (Erlangen, 1856); G. Nasse, Zur Geschichte der mittelälterlichen Feldgemeinschaft in England (Bonn, 1869); H. S. Maine, Village Communities in the East and West (Cambridge, 1872); F. Seebohm, The English Village Community (1883); W. J. Ashley, English Economic History, pts. i. ii. (1888–1893); F. W. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts (London, Selden Society, 1888); P. Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Cambridge, 1892); The Growth of the Manor (1905) and English Society in the 11th Century (1908); A. Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Westgermanen und Ostgermanen (Berlin, 1896); W. Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce (Cambridge, 1896); F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, History of English Law (Cambridge, 1896); F. W. Maitland, Doomsday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897); and C. M. Andrews, The Old English Manor (1892). (C. G. Cr.)