GROWTH OF THE MANOR 7 



'herefore when the Normans brought their wonderful genius 

 jfor organization to this country they found the material 

 )nditions of manorial life in full growth ; it was their task to 

 jlevelop its legal and economic side.^ 



As the manorial system thus superimposed upon the 

 Milage community was the basis of English rural economy for 

 centuries, there need be no apology for describing it at some 

 length. 



The term ' manor ', which came in with the Conquest,^ has a 

 technical meaning in Domesday, referring to the system of 

 taxation, and did not always coincide with the vill or village, 

 though it commonly did so, except in the eastern portion of 

 England. The village was the agrarian unit, the manor the 

 fiscal unit ; so that where the manor comprised more than one 

 village, as was frequently the case, there would be more than 

 one village organization for working the common fields.^ 



The manor then was the ' constitutive cell ' of English medi- 

 aeval society.'* The structure is always the same ; under the 

 headship of the lord we find two layers of population, the vil- 

 leins and the freeholders ; and the territory is divided into 

 demesne land and tributary land of two classes, viz. that of the 

 villeins and that of the freeholders. The cultivation of the de- 

 mesne (which usually means the land directly occupied and 

 cultivated by the lord, though legally it has a wider meaning 

 and includes the villein tenements), depends to a certain extent 

 on the work supplied by the tenants of the tributary land. 

 Rents are collected, labour superintended, administrative busi' 

 ness transacted by a set of manorial officers. 



We may divide the tillers of the soil at the time of Domes- 

 day into five great classes,^ in order of dignity and freedom : 

 I. Liberi homines, or freemen, 

 a. Socmen. 



1 Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, p. 339. 



^ Maitland, Domesday Book, p. no. ' Vinogradoff, op. cit. p. 395. 



* Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, pp. 223 et seq. 



* Maitland, op. cit. p. 23. 



