461 



MANOR. 



MANU. 



Prserogativa Regis we find an express exception in favour of alienations 

 made with the licence of the king. It seems to be questionable 

 whether, even by the common law, the immediate tenant of the crown 

 did not incur a forfeiture by making a subfeoffment without licence. 

 (34 Edw. III., c. 15.) It has also been objected that a court-baron is 

 necessary to a manor, and that a man cannot, by granting lands in tail, 

 reserving suit at his court, create a court-baron. But this objection 

 assumes that no greater subtenure can now be created than an estate 

 tail ; whereas, iritk licence, a subtenure in fee may be created, and the 

 holding of a court-baron seems to be incidental at common law to the 

 seigniory over tenants in fee-simple. 



Practically however no entirely new manors are now created ; but 

 where, upon the partition of a manor, part of the demesnes and part 

 of the services, including suit of court of a sufficient number of free- 

 hold tenants to constitute a court-baron, are assigned to one parcener, 

 joint-tenant, or tenant in common, and other parts of the demesnes 

 and services to another parcener, &c., each party has a manor, and may 

 hold a court-baron. And it is said that if a manor extends into several 

 townships, the lord may create se;>arate manors by conveying the 

 demesnes and services in township A to one, and those in township B 

 to another. 



IV. Manort, how dettroytd. A manor is not destroyed by the loss 

 of those incidents which, though members, and forming part, of the 

 manor, are not, like demesnes and services, the " material causes of a 

 manor." Nor will the legal existence of the manor be affected by the 

 alienation of part of the demesnes, or by the alienation or extinction of 

 part of the services, or by the extinction of all the copyholds. But 

 upon the alienation of all the demesnes, or the alienation or extinction 

 of all the services, the manor ceases, and is said to be destroyed : and 

 though any part of the demesnes, however small, will keep alive the 

 manor, if there be sufficient services, it can exist no longer than whilst 

 there can be found enough freehold tenants to constitute a court-baron. 

 Thus if the lord purchase the lands of all his freehold tenants, or of 

 all except one, or if the freehold escheat, or if the lord release or alien 

 the services, the manor ceases to exist. So, if the lord alien the free- 

 hold of all lands holden of him by copy of court-roll, or enfranchise all 

 the copyholders, in a manor where there are no demesnes except the 

 copyholds. So, if he alien all the demesnes. So if, upon a partition 

 of the manor, the demesnes are allotted to one and the services to 

 another. But in none of these cases is the destruction of the manor 

 absolute and irrevocable. If there cease to be any demesnes, so that 

 the manor is turned into a seigniory in gross, yet upon the event of 

 any of the freeholds holden of the manor coming to the lord by escheat 

 or purchase, the lands so escheating or purchased will become demesnes 

 of the manor, as they were, before the subinfeudation of those lands, 

 whereby they were originally severed from the manor, took place. 

 Where a manor is destroyed by partition between co-parceners, if one 

 die, and the other takes the share of the party dying as heir, the 

 manor revives; but it would not be so in the case of a partition 

 between joint-tenants or tenants in common, nor would the manor 

 revive in the case of co-parceners if the severed portion of the manor 

 were re-united, not by descent, but by purchase. Where all the free- 

 hold tenants havo ceased to exist except one, there is no longer a 

 complete legal manor, because there can be no court-baron ; but it the 

 remaining tenant convey his tenement in fee to different persons in 

 severally, as there will be now a sufficient number of freeholders 

 holding of the manor, to constitute a court-baron, the manor will 

 revive. But without such revival, the estate is by some lawyers con- 

 sidered to be still entitled to the designation of a manor, by reason of 

 there being demesnes and a seigniory appendant, though over one 

 tenant only. (1 'Anderson,' 257.) Such an v.-tate is however more 

 frequently called " a manor by reputation,' a vague term, applied 

 indiscriminately to all estates which have been manors, and which 

 indeed would be equally applicable to a property which had acquired 

 the name of a manor without having ever been one. 



V. Manort, Cialomar//. So much importance formerly attached to 

 the possession of a principal mansion at which the services of tenants 

 might be rendered, that a person holding lands in customary villenage 

 might grant portion.; of his villenage to be holden of the grantor, for 

 as great an estate as the grantor had, as of his mansion or manerium. 

 The estate <>f the grantor, which, after this operation, would consist of 

 the mansion and the other ungranted portions of the villenage, with 

 the services of the grantees appendant thereto, was called a customary 

 manor. 



The estate of a person to whom the lord of a manor has granted the 

 freehold and seigniory of nil the copyholds within the manor or within 

 a certain diitrict, has been sometimes loosely called " a customary 

 manor." But such an estate cannot, in any sense, be said to consist of 

 demesne* and services. 



VI. Mfjiiiin in Am-irnt Demctne are those manors which, though now 

 mostly in the bands of subjects, funned part <if the royal domain at 

 tlie time of the Conquest, and are designated in Domesday as " terra 

 regis." The peculiarity of these manors i -. that there exists in them 

 a particular class of tenants pose.ing certain customary privileges, 

 Uppoaed. by Lord Coke and others, to be derived from the indulgence 

 of the crown in matters " pertaining to the king's husbandry." They 

 were formerly callad " tenants in sot-age in ancient tenure," but are 

 now commonly known an " tenants in ancient demesne," a term not 



in itself very accurate, since all tenants within these ancient demesne 

 manors, whether copyholders or leaseholders, and even the lord himself, 

 are strictly speaking tenants in ancient demesne. In these customary 

 tenures the freehold is not in the lord, but in the. tenant, who is there- 

 fore called a customary freeholder ; and it does not appear to be neces- 

 sary to the continuance of the manor that there should be any other 

 freehold tenants, though lands may be held of a manor in ancient 

 demesne by the ordinary freehold tenure, which lands are called lands 

 in frank-fee by way of distinguishing them from the customary free- 

 holds held by the " tenants in socage in ancient tenure," now called 

 " tenants in ancient demesne " 



VII. Manors in Border Counties. The exposed state of the northern 

 borders of England, liable to hostile incursions in time of war, and 

 scarcely less in times of nominal peace, created a peculiar species of 

 tenure in the manors in the four northern counties. Persons holding 

 by this tenure are called customary freeholders; though here the 

 freehold is in the lord, and the timber and mines belong to him, and 

 not (as in the tenure in ancient demesne) to the tenants ; but they are 

 so called because they are allowed the privilege of passing their estates, 

 as freeholders do, by feoffment and livery, a privilege perhaps derived 

 from the irregularity with which the customary courts of the manor 

 were held, and from the necessity of allowing persons whose tenure of 

 land and of life was so uncertain to make immediate dispositions of 

 their property. 



VIII. Manors, Astessionable. A term peculiar to that part of the 

 domain of the Duke of Cornwall [WALKS, PRINCE OF] which is situate 

 within the county of Cornwall, consisting of seventeen manors, namely, 

 Launceston, Trematon, Tyntagell, Restorrnel, Stoke-Climsland, Tybeste, 

 Tewington, Helston-in-Kerrier, Moresk, Ty warnhaile, Peukneth, Penlyn, 

 Kellaton, Helston-in-Trigshire, Liskeard, Calstock, and Talakydy. 



The earls and dukes of Cornwall, and, when no earl or duke, the 

 crown, have sent from time to time (commonly every seven years) 

 certain persons commissioned to visit these manors in succession, and 

 to atteu ,the lord's demesnes, that is, to let them at such rents and 

 upon such terms as might appear to them to be advantageous to the 

 duchy. The courts held by the commissioners for the purpose of 

 exercising the authority thus delegated to them were called assessims, 

 or courts of aisasion. The course usually was to let the land until the 

 next assession. From the conventions (covenants or engagements) 

 entered into by the persons to whom those demesnes were so arrented, 

 the interest demised was called a tenure in conventinne, and the tenants 

 were styled conventionaries. These demises were made both to free- 

 men and villeins ; the former being called free conventionaries, the 

 latter villein or native conventiouaries. The latter class appears to have 

 become extinct in the 16th century. 



By degrees the conventionary tenants acquired an inheritable interest 

 in the certainty of the renewal of their holdings in favour of them- 

 selves and their descendants at each successive aasession. The con- 

 ventionary tenant thus acquired, like a copyholder of inheritance, an 

 interest freehold in point of duration, without a freehold tenure. 



In conventionary tenements the minerals belong to the lord, and not 

 to the customary tenant ; as it was held upon a trial at bar in 1829, 

 which lasted seven days (Rowe i: Brenton, 3 Maun, and Ryl., 133-364). 



MANSLAUGHTER. [MURDER.] 



MANU (a word which implies "rational," from man, to "under- 

 stand"), according to a Hindu fiction, was the son or grandson 

 of the creating deity of Brahma, the first of rational beings, and the 

 progenitor of mankind, who thence are called Manavas, or Manujas 

 (offspring of Manu). To this primeval sage, the father of the human 

 race, and consequently their patriarchal ruler and legislator, is ascribed 

 a celebrated system of religious and civil law, which in the beginning 

 of time was revealed to him by Brahuia, and has been handed down by 

 tradition to the present age. In other words, the Sanskrit work now 

 extant, and indiscriminately called Smriti (tradition), or Manava- 

 dharma-sastra (the Institutes of Manu), is deemed by the Hindus not 

 only the oldest but at the same time the holiest text after the Vedas. 

 Before these pretensions of the sacred code to antiquity and authority 

 can be duly appreciated, it will be convenient to state its contents, and 

 to point out the leading features of a system at once so comprehensive 

 and so complicated that it would be almost impossible to dwell upon 

 its particular precepts without entering fully into the labyrinth of 

 Hindu religion and ceremonies. The work is divided into tlie twelve 

 following chapters: i. On the creation; ii. On education, or on the 

 first order ; iii. On marriage, or on the second order ; iv. On economics 

 and private morals ; v. On diet, purification, and women ; vi On devo- 

 tion, or on the third and fourth orders ; vii. On government, and on the 

 military class ; viii. On judicature, and on law, private and criminal; 

 ix. On the commercial and servile classes ; x. Un the mixed classes, 

 and on time of distress ; xi. On penance and expiation ; xii. On trans- 

 migration and final beatitude. 



We shall not dwell on the first or last chapter ; the first is occupied 

 with a summary of the contents of the whole code, and with a problem 

 of cosmogony, in accordance with the wild and fanciful conceptions of 

 Hindu metaphysics and natural philosophy ; the twelfth chapter con- 

 tains a detailed system of metempsychosis and final punishments, 

 closely connected with the institutes of temporal law. It id obvious 

 that either a strict order in the arrangement of the judicial coda has 

 been neglected, or, what is more probable, the monarchical and civil 



