14 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



two had failed to repair their houses or buildings. In all 

 thirty-four were in trouble out of a population of some sixty 

 families. The account is eloquent of the irritating restrictions 

 of the manor, and of the inconveniences of common farming.^ 



It is impossible to compare the receipts of the lord of the 

 manor at this period with modern rents, or the position of the 

 villein with the agricultural labourer ; it may be said that the 

 lord received a labour rent for the villein's holding, or that the 

 villein received his holding as wages for the services done for 

 the lord,^ and part of the return due to the lord was for the 

 use of the oxen with which he had stocked the villein's 

 holding. 



Though in 1066 there were many free villages, yet by the 

 time of Domesday they were fast disappearing and there 

 were manors everywhere, usually coinciding with the village^ 

 which we may picture to ourselves as self-sufficing estates, 

 often isolated by stretches of dense woodland and moor from 

 one another, and making each veritably a little world in itself. 

 At the same time it is evident from the extent of arable land 

 described in Domesday that many manors were not greatly 

 isolated, and pasture ground was often common to two or 

 more villages.^ 



If we picture to ourselves the typical manor, we shall 

 see a large part of the lord's demesne forming a compact 

 area within which stood his house ; this being in addition 

 to the lord's strips in the open fields intermixed with those 

 of his tenants. The mansion house was usually a very 

 simple affair, built of wood and consisting chiefly of a hall ; 

 which even as late as the seventeenth century in some cases 

 served as kitchen, dining room, parlour, and sleeping room 



^ Manor 0/ Many down, Hampshire Record Society, p. 17. Breaking the 

 assize of beer meant selling it without a licence, or of bad quality. The 

 village pound was the consequence of the perpetual straying of animals, 

 and later on the vicar sometimes kept it. See ibid. p. 104. 



" Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i. 106. 



^ Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 264. 



