The Villages, Manors, Parishes, and Parks
We have seen that in Norman times the whole country was, so to
speak, the king's. There were the great lords who held "fiefs" or
possessions directly from the king, which consisted of manors in
various parts of the country--sometimes a number of manors pretty
close together, but often with big stretches of unoccupied land
between them over which the king had full control. Out of these
unused districts the king could, and often did make new grants of
land.
As years rolled on, the manors became more valuable, and new manors
were formed. In the earlier days the manor and the parish meant
much the same thing; but in course of time, though the boundaries
of the parish did not alter much, the number of manors increased in
some parishes from one to two or three, or even more.
In many cases the mode of life on these manors went on unchanged
for centuries, the tenants of these different manors going to the
original parish church and the parish priest ministering to the
people in all the manors in his parish. In other cases daughter
churches, or chapels of ease, were built in the newer manors, and
provision was made for the support of a priest to minister to them.
These have in some instances been erected in the course of time
into separate parishes; but many remained as parts of the mother
parish, though they might be several miles away from the parish
church.
All through the Norman times there was a tendency to make new
manors, and this gave rise to so many difficulties that the
practice was stopped in the time of King Edward I.
In all parts of England to-day we have parks belonging to big
mansions; and our big towns and cities have their parks too; but
these are usually recreation-grounds for the people, and most of
them are quite modern, with bandstands and sports' grounds, clumps
of shrubs, flower-beds, and stretches of greensward. A park in
Norman and in Early English times was very different in appearance
from our parks, whether in town or country. Just as the king had
his great forests for hunting wild beasts, so in the later Norman
times the great lords were anxious to enclose pieces of waste and
forest land for the same purpose.
As we have seen, there were in early times vast tracts of wild,
uncultivated, unenclosed land, partly wooded and partly heath land,
between the manors, which belonged to the king. The king alone
could give leave to make a park. In the reign of King Henry III
especially we find many such parks were "empaled". Of course the
nobles had to give something to the king for this privilege.
Many of the old parks in England, now celebrated for their fine
timber and beautiful scenery, date back to this period; but they
were at first much wilder, and the trees then were neither so many
nor so fine as they are now. The deer remaining in some of them
to-day just serve to remind us of the "wild beasts" with which they
were stocked.
The laws for preserving the wild beasts and the game in these
parks and forests and chases were very strict, harsh, and severe.
Many of these new parks took away from the villeins, who lived
in the neighbourhood, certain rights and privileges which their
forefathers had had "time out of mind".
Though the land could not be bought and sold outright, manors
became divided and subdivided, let and underlet, for various terms
of years, and in many curious ways, so that in time the profits,
or the income, of a manor, instead of going straight to the lord
of the manor, might be going to half a dozen different persons and
places. For instance, the half of a manor might be divided amongst
several people for, say, twenty years, or for the lives of three or
four people; but at the end of the twenty years, or on the death
of the last of those persons, it must go back to the lord of the
manor, who could keep it in his hands or let it out in other ways
to quite a different set of people.
[Illustration: _Manor House, Thirteenth Century_
_Built by Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath, and Chancellor to
Edward I at Acton Burnell, Shropshire._]
It is not very difficult to understand that the management of an
estate of many manors, broken up into many small portions, became
very complicated. Records of all these various transactions had to
be made in writing: and carefully kept, and copied and re-copied
time after time. People who understood all the "ins and outs" of
the laws relating to the possession of land became very important
and very busy.
There are immense numbers of documents, some of them dating back
to Norman and even earlier times, still in existence. The Record
Office, in London, has many thousands of documents connected
with the king's business; the borough towns and cities and the
monasteries each had their own records, but most of these latter
records disappeared in the sixteenth century; every old estate
has such documents; and many of the old manors have still records
going back many centuries. Of course thousands more of these old
documents have been lost, some destroyed purposely, and others
through carelessness and ignorance. Some have been burnt in times
of danger, when their owner, knowing that there were documents
amongst them which might get him into trouble and cost him his
head, set fire to bundles of papers and parchments. Others have
been stored away in dark, damp cellars and forgotten for years and
years, and rats and mice have nibbled them away, or mildew and damp
have caused them to rot.
Those that we have left can still be read, and it is surprising to
find in many cases how well they have been preserved all through
the centuries. The letters are very often beautifully formed, and
the whole clear and distinct. They were written in Norman French
and Latin, the latter being the language in which law business was
carried on for many centuries.[13]
[13] Notice a fine specimen, written before the Conquest, given
on p. 103, and the illustration facing p. 88.