20 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM 



their fathers. Here, finally, on the sworn evidence of a body of 

 jurors chosen from the tenants, were drawn up the surveys of the 

 manor which recorded the exact condition of the estate the total 

 acreage of the demesne, and of each of the arable fields, of the 

 meadows, the several pastures and the pasturage, and their annual 

 values ; the state of the woods and the coppices, how much could 

 be cut, and what they were worth yearly ; the acreage of the 

 commons and the stock which they would carry ; the number of 

 the live-stock of various kinds ; the holdings of the free tenants, 

 and their rents or services ; the holdings of the villeins, bordars, 

 and cottagers, their services and money equivalents ; the profits 

 of fisheries, mills, and incidental manorial rights ; the number of 

 tenants who had finally commuted their services for fixed payments 

 in cash, of those who, at the discretion of the lord, either rendered 

 labour services or paid the money values, and of those who still 

 discharged their personal obligations by actual work. 



The remainder of the cultivated land of the manor was occupied 

 by tenants who paid rents in the form of military or labour 

 services, or money, or produce. Their farm practices, crops, 

 and live-stock were the same as those of the demesne, though their 

 difficulties in combating winter scarcity were greater. Free tenants, 

 whose tenure was military service, or who had commuted the per- 

 sonal obligations for quit-rents, may sometimes have held land, 

 like modern farmers, in their exclusive occupation for individual 

 cultivation. But the area of free land was comparatively small, 

 and, as often as not, it was thrown into the village farm, occupied 

 and cultivated in common by an agrarian association of co-partners, 

 free and unfree. 



The varieties of tenure were great. So also were the varieties 

 of social condition, and of the obligations by which the grades of 

 those social conditions were governed. The distinctions between 

 freemen and bondmen and between freehold and bond tenure had 

 been, in the eye of the law, broad and deep. But custom had 

 gradually intervened, and, with endless variety of practice, miti- 

 gated the severity of legal theory. At law the bondman's position 

 was subject to the lord's caprice. Unlike the freeman, he was tied 

 to the manor ; he could not leave it without licence from the lord, 

 and payment of a fine. His services were uncertain in amount, 

 and could be increased at the lord's pleasure. He paid a fine to 

 marry his daughter, to send his son to school, to make him a priest 



