have observed, one shilling; that manor to all appearance was nothing
but a piece of pasture land[496]. Yet each of these holdings is a
_mansio_, and the Bishop of Winchester's holding at Taunton is a
_mansio_.
[Small manors in the east.]
From one side of England we will journey to the other side; from Devon
and Somerset to Essex and Suffolk. We soon observe that in describing
the holdings of the 'free men' and sokemen of this eastern district as
they were in King Edward's day, our record constantly introduces the
term _manerium_. A series of entries telling us how 'a free man held _x_
hides or carucates or acres' will ever and anon be broken by an entry
that tells us how 'a free man held _x_ hides or carucates or acres for a
manor'[497]. We soon give up counting the cases in which the manor is
rated at 60 acres. We begin counting the cases in which it is rated at
30 acres and find them numerous; we see manors rated at 24 acres, at 20,
at 15, at 12 acres. But this, it may be said, tells us little, for these
manors may be extravagantly underrated[498]. Let us then look at a few
of them.
(i) In Espalle Siric held 30 acres for a manor; there were always 3
bordiers and one team and 4 acres of meadow; wood for 60 pigs and
13 beasts. It was then worth 10_s._[499]
(ii) In Torentuna Turchetel a free man held 30 acres for a manor;
there were always 2 bordiers and one team and a half. It is worth
10_s._[500]
(iii) In Bonghea Godric a free man held 30 acres for a manor; there
were 1 bordier and 1 team and 2 acres of meadow. It was then worth
8_s_.[501]
(iv) Three free men and their mother held 30 acres for a manor.
There was half a team. Value, 5_s._[502]
(v) In Rincham a free man held 30 acres for a manor. There were
half a team and one acre of meadow. Value, 5_s._[503]
(vi) In Wenham Ælfgar a free man held 24 acres for a manor. Value,
4_s._[504]
(vii) In Torp a free man held 20 acres for a manor. One team; wood
for 5 pigs. Value, 40_d._[505]
(viii) In Tudenham Ælfric the deacon, a free man, held 12 acres for
a manor. One team, 3 bordiers, 2 acres of meadow, 1 rouncey, 2
beasts that do not plough, 11 pigs, 40 sheep. Value, 3_s._[506]
We are not speaking of curiosities; the sixty acre manor was very common
in Essex, the thirty acre manor was no rarity in Suffolk.
[The manor as a peasant's holding.]
Now it is plain enough that the 'lord' of such a manor,--or rather the
holder of such a manor, for there was little lordship in the case,--was
often enough a peasant, a tiller of the soil. He was under soke and
under commendation; commended it may be to one lord, rendering soke to
another. Sometimes he is called a sokeman[507]. But he has a manor.
Sometimes he has a full team, sometimes but half a team. Sometimes he
has a couple of bordiers seated on his land, who help him in his
husbandry. Sometimes there is no trace of tenants, and his holding is by
no means too large to permit of his cultivating it by his own labour and
that of his sons. No doubt in the west country even before the Conquest
these petty _mansiones_ or _maneria_ were being accumulated in the hands
of the wealthy. The thegn who was the _antecessor_ of the Norman baron,
sometimes held a group, a geographically discontinuous group, of petty
manors as well as some more substantial and better consolidated estates.
But still each little holding is reckoned a manor, while in the east of
England there is nothing to show that the nameless free men who held the
manors which are said to consist of 60, 40, 30 acres had usually more
than one manor apiece. When therefore we are told that already before
the Conquest England was full of manors, we must reply: Yes, but of what
manors[508]?
[Definition of a manor.]
Now were the differences between various manors a mere difference in
size and in value, a student of law might pass them by. Our notion of
ownership is the same whether it be applied to the largest and most
precious, or to the smallest and most worthless of things. But in this
case we have not to deal with mere differences in size or value. The
examples that we have given will have proved that few, if any,
propositions of legal import will hold good of all _maneria_. We must
expressly reject some suggestions that the later history of our law may
make to us. 'A manor has a court of its own':--this is plainly untrue.
To say nothing of extreme cases, of the smallest of the manors that we
have noticed, we can not easily believe that a manor with less than ten
tenants has a court of its own, yet the number of such manors is
exceedingly large. 'A manor has freehold tenants':--this of course we
must deny, unless we hold that the _villani_ are freeholders. 'A manor
has villein or customary tenants':--even this proposition, though true
of many cases, we can not accept. Not only may we find a manor the only
tenants upon which are _liberi homines_[509], but we are compelled to
protest that a manor need not have any tenants at all. 'A manor must
contain demesne land':--this again we can not believe. In one case we
read that the whole manor is being farmed by the villeins so that there
is nothing in demesne[510], while in other cases we are told that there
is nothing in demesne and see no trace of any recent change[511]. Thus,
one after another, all the familiar propositions seem to fail us, and
yet we have seen good reason to believe that _manerium_ has some exact
meaning. It remains that we should hazard an explanation.
[The manor and the geld.]
A manor is a house against which geld is charged. To the opinion that in
some way or another the definition of a manor is intimately connected
with the great tax we shall be brought by phrases such as the following:
'Richard holds Fivehide of the Earl which Brihtmær held in King Edward's
time for forty acres and for a manor[512].'--'Two free men who were
brothers, Bondi and Ælfric held it for two hides and for two
manors[513].' When we say that a man holds land 'as' or 'for' (_pro_)
forty acres, we mean that his holding, be its real size what it may, is
rated to the geld at forty acres. If we add the words 'and as (or for)
one manor,' surely we are still speaking of the geld. For one moment the
thought may cross our minds that, besides a tax on land, there has been
an additional tax on 'halls,' on houses of a certain size or value; but
this we soon dismiss as most unlikely. To raise but one out of many
objections: had there been such a house-tax, it would have left plain
traces of itself in those 'Geld Inquests' of the south-western counties
that have come down to us. Rather we regard the matter thus:--The geld
is a land-tax, a tax of so much per hide or carucate. In all likelihood
it has been assessed according to a method which we might call the
method of subpartitioned provincial quotas. The assumption has been made
that a shire or other large district contains a certain number of hides;
this number has then been apportioned among the hundreds of that shire,
and the number allotted to each hundred has been apportioned among the
vills of that hundred. The common result is that some neat number of
hides, five, ten or the like is attributed to the vill[514]. This again
has been divided between the holdings in that vill. Ultimately it is
settled that for fiscal purposes a given holding contains, or must be
deemed to contain, this or that number of hides, virgates, or acres.
Thus far the system makes no use of the _manerium_. But it now has to
discover some house against which a demand may be made for every
particular penny of geld. Despite the 'realism' of the system, it has to
face the fact that, after all, taxes must be paid by men and not by
land. Men live in houses. It seeks the tax-payer in his house. Now, were
all the occupiers of land absolute owners of the land that they
occupied, even were it true that every acre had some one person as its
absolute owner, the task would be simple. A schedule of five columns,
such we are familiar with, would set forth 'Owner's Name,' 'Place of
Residence,' 'Description of Geldable Property,' 'Hidage,' 'Amount due.'
But the occupier is not always the owner; what is more, there is no
absolute ownership. Two, three, four persons will be interested in the
land; the occupier will have a lord and that lord a lord; the occupier
may be a serf, a villein, a sokeman; there is commendation to be
considered and soke and all the infinite varieties of the power to
'withdraw' the land from the lord. Rude and hard and arbitrary lines
must be drawn. Of course the state will endeavour to collect the geld in
big sums. It will endeavour to make the great folk answer for the geld
which lies on any land that is in any way subject to their power; thus
the cost of collecting petty sums will be saved and the tax will be
charged on men who are solvent. The central power may even hold out
certain advantages to the lord who will become responsible for the geld
of his tenants or justiciables or commended men. The hints that we get
in divers counties that the lord's 'inland' has borne no geld seem to
point in this direction, though the arrangements about this matter seem
to have varied from shire to shire[515]. On the pipe rolls of a later
day we see that the geld charged against the magnates is often
'pardoned.' For one reason the king can not easily tax the rich; for
another he can not easily tax the poor; so he gets at the poor through
the rich. The small folk will gladly accept any scheme that will keep
the tax-collector from their doors, even though they purchase their
relief by onerous promises of rents and services. The great men, again,
may find advantage in such bargains; they want periodical rents and
services, and in order to obtain them will accept a certain
responsibility for occasional taxes. This process had gone very far on
the eve of the Conquest. Moreover the great men had enjoyed a large
liberty of paying their geld where they pleased, of making special
compositions with the king, of turning some wide and discrete territory
into a single geld-paying unit, of forming such 'manors' as Taunton or
Berkeley or Leominster.
[Classification of men for the geld.]
In King Edward's day, the occupiers of the soil might, so it seems to
us, be divided by the financier into three main classes. In the first
class we place the man who has a manor. He has, that is, a house at
which he is charged with geld. He may be a great man or a small, an earl
or a peasant; he may be charged at that house with the geld of a hundred
hides or with the geld of fifteen acres. In the second class we place
the villeins, bordiers, cottiers. The geld apportioned to the land that
they occupy is demanded from their lord at his manor, or one of his
manors. How he recoups himself for having to make this payment, that is
his concern; but he is responsible for it to the king, not as guarantor
but as principal debtor. But then, at least in the east and north, there
are many men who fall into neither of these classes. They are not
villeins, they are sokemen or 'free men'; but their own tenements are
not manors; they belong to or 'lie in' some manor of their lord. These
men, we think, can be personally charged with the geld; but they pay
their geld at their lord's hall and he is in some measure bound to exact
the payment.
[Proofs of connexion between the manor and the geld.]
Any thing that could be called a strict proof of this theory we can not
offer; but it has been suggested by many facts and phrases which we can
not otherwise explain. In the first place, our record seems to assume
that every holding either is a manor or forms part of a manor[516]. Then
we are told how lands 'geld' at or in some manor or at the _caput
manerii_. Thus lands which lie many miles away from Tewkesbury, but
which belong to the manor of Tewkesbury, 'geld in Tewkesbury[517].'
Sometimes the same information is conveyed to us by a phrase that
deserves notice. A piece of land is said to 'defend itself' in or at
some manor, or, which is the same thing, to have its _wara_ or render
its _wara_, that is to say, its defence, its answer to the demand for
geld, there[518]. 'In Middleton two sokemen had 16 acres of land and
they rendered their _wara_ in the said Middleton, but they could give
and sell their land to whom they pleased[519].' When we are told that
certain lands are _in warnode Drogonis_ or _in warnode Archiepiscopi_,
it is meant that the lands belong to Drogo or the Archbishop for the
purpose of 'defence' against the geld[520]. It is not sufficient that
land should be taxed, it must be taxed 'in' some place, which may be
remote from that in which, as a matter of physical fact, it lies[521].
One clear case of a free tenant paying his geld to his lord is put
before us:--'Leofwin had half a hide and could withdraw with his land
and he paid geld to his lord and his lord paid nothing[522].' Besides
this we have cases in which the lord enjoys the special privilege of
collecting the geld from his tenants and keeping it for his own
use[523]. A remarkable Kentish entry tells us that at Peckham the
archbishop had an estate which had been rated at six sullungs, and then
that 'of the land of this manor a certain man of the archbishop held a
half-sullung which in King Edward's day gelded with these six sullungs,
although being free land it did not belong to the manor save for the
purpose of the scot[524].' Here we have land so free that the one
connexion between it and the manor to which it is attributed consists in
the payment of geld--it gelds along with the other lands of the manor.
In the great lawsuit between the churches of Worcester and Evesham about
the lands at Hamton, the former contended that these lands should pay
their geld along with the other estates of the bishop[525].
[Land gelds in a manor.]
Let us observe the first question that the commissioners are to ask of
the jurors. What is the name of the _mansio_? Every piece of geldable
land is connected with some _mansio_, at which it gelds. Let us observe
how the commissioners and the jurors proceed in a district where the
_villae_ and the _mansiones_ or _maneria_ are but rarely coincident. The
jurors of the Armingford hundred of Cambridgeshire are speaking of their
country vill by vill. They come to the vill of Abington[526]. Abington,
they say, was rated at five hides. Of these five hides the king has a
half-hide; this lies in Litlington. Earl Roger has one virgate; this
lies in his manor of Shingay. Picot the sheriff has a half-virgate; this
lies and has always lain in Morden. In what sense important to the
commissioners or their master can a bundle of strips scattered about in
the fields of Abington be said to lie in Litlington, in Shingay, or in
Morden? We answer that it gelds there.
[Geld and hall.]
Hence the importance of the hall. It is the place where geld is demanded
and paid. A manor without a hall is a thing to be carefully noted,
otherwise some geld may be lost[527]. A man's land has descended to his
three sons: if 'there is only one hall,' but one demand for geld need be
made; if 'each has his hall,' there must be three separate demands. When
we are told that two brothers held land and that each had his house
(_domus_) though they dwelt in one court (_curia_), a nice problem is
being put before us:--Two halls, or one hall--Two manors or one
manor[528]?
[The petty manors.]
The petty _maneria_ of Suffolk, what can they be but holdings which geld
by themselves? The holders of them are not great men, they have no
tenants or just two or three bordiers; sometimes they can not 'withdraw'
their lands from their lords. But still they pay their own taxes at
their own houses.
[The lord and his man's taxes.]
In supposing that forces have been at work which tend to make the lord
responsible for the taxes of his men, we are not without a warrant in
the ancient dooms. 'If a king's thegn or a lord of land (_landrica_)
neglects to pay the Rome penny, let him forfeit ten half-marks, half to
Christ, half to the king. If a "townsman" withholds the penny, let the
lord of the land pay the penny and take an ox from the man, and if the
lord neglects to do this, then let Christ and the king receive the full
_bót_ of 12 ores[529].' The right of doing justice is also the duty of
doing justice. It is natural that the lord with soke should become a
tax-gatherer, and he will gladly guarantee the taxes if thereby he can
prevent the king's officers from entering his precinct and meddling with
his justiciables. At no time has the state found it easy to collect
taxes from the poor; over and over again it has been glad to avail
itself of the landlord's intermediation[530].
[Distinction between villeins and sokemen.]
Our theory that while the lord is directly and primarily responsible for
the geld of his villeins, he is but subsidiarily responsible for the
geld of those of his sokemen or 'free men' who are deemed to belong to
his manor, is founded in part on what we take to have been the wording
of King William's writ[531], in part on the form taken by the returns
made thereto. The writ draws a marked line between the villein and the
sokeman. The king wishes to know how much land each sokeman, each _liber
homo_, holds; he does not care that any distinction should be drawn
between the lord's demesne lands and the lands of the villeins. And, on
the whole, his commands are obeyed. A typical entry in the survey of
East Anglia will first describe in one mass the land held by the lord
and his villeins, will tell us how many carucates this land is rated at,
how many teams there are on the demesne, and how many the men have, then
it will enumerate sheep and pigs and goats, and then, as it were in an
appendix, it will add that so many sokemen belong to this manor and that
between them they hold so many carucates or acres[532]. In Suffolk even
the names of these humble tenants are sometimes recorded[533]. And then,
we have seen[534] that there is some doubt as to whether or no these men
are or are not to be reckoned as part of the manor for all purposes. We
have to say that the manor 'with the free men,' or 'without the free
men' is worth so much.
[The lord's subsidiary liability.]
After all, we are only supposing that the fashion in which the danegeld
was put in charge resembled in some of its main outlines the fashion in
which a very similar tax was put in charge under Richard I. In 1194 the
land-tax that was levied for the payment of the king's ransom seems to
have been assessed according to the hidage stated in Domesday Book[535].
Then in 1198 a new assessment was made. We are told that the king
ordained that every baron should with the sheriffs aid distrain his men
to pay the tax cast upon them, and that if, owing to the baron's
default, distresses were not made, then the amount due from the baron's
men should be seized from the baron's own demesne and he should be left
to recoup himself as best he could[536]. Now it is a liability of this
sort that we are venturing to carry back into the Confessor's day. The
lord is responsible to the state as principal, and indeed as sole,
debtor for so much of the geld as is due from his demesne land and from
the land of his _villani_, while as regards any lands of 'free men' or
sokemen which are attached to his manor, his liability is not primary
nor absolute; he is bound to take measures to make these men pay their
taxes; if he fails in this duty, then their taxes will become due from
his demesne[537].
[Manors distributed to the Frenchmen.]
When we read that in Nottinghamshire the relief of the thegn who had six
manors or less was three marks, while his who had more than six manors
was eight pounds[538], this may seem to hint that some inferior limit
was set to the size of the manor. If so, it was drawn at a very low
point in the scale of tenements. Possibly some general rule had
compelled all men who held less than a bovate or half-virgate to 'add'
themselves to the manor of some lord. But the Nottinghamshire rule is
rude and arbitrary. He who has seven houses against which geld is
charged is a big man. On the other hand, it is probable that the Norman
lords brought with them some notion, and not a very modest notion, of
what a reasonably sufficient _manerium_ should be. The king has in some
cases rewarded them by a promise of ten or twenty manors without
specifying very carefully what those manors are to be like. He has
promised Count Eustace a hundred manors[539]. Thus we would explain a
not uncommon class of entries:--'fourteen free men commended to Wulfsige
were delivered to Rainald to make up (_ad perficiendum_) this manor of
Carlington[540].'--'in Berningham a free man held 20 acres of land and
this was delivered to Walter Giffard to make up Letheringsett[541].'--
'Peter claims the land which belonged to seventeen free men as having
been delivered to him to make up this manor[542].'--'This land was
delivered to Peter to make up some, but his men do not know what,
manor[543].' The small 'free men' of the east have been 'added to'
manors to which they did not belong in King Edward's day. A few of the
free men of Suffolk still 'remain in the king's hand' ready to be
delivered out to complete the manors of their conquerors[544]. Here too
we may perhaps find the explanation of the entry which says that Hugh de
Port held Wallop 'for half a manor[545].' The king has promised him a
dozen or score of manors; and this estate at Wallop worth but fifteen
shillings a year, really no gentleman would take it for a manor.
[Summary.]
Such then is the best explanation that we can offer of the _manerium_ of
Domesday Book. About details we may be wrong, but that this term has a
technical meaning which is connected with the levy of the danegeld we
can not doubt. It loses that meaning in course of time because the
danegeld gives way before newer forms of taxation. It never again
acquires a technical meaning until the late days when retrospective
lawyers find the essence of a manor in its court[546].
FOOTNOTES:
[428] D. B. ii. 21, 26, 37 b, 59 b.
[429] D. B. i. 21.
[430] D. B. i. 45.
[431] D. B. i. 6 b.
[432] D. B. i. 27.
[433] D. B. i. 163.
[434] So in the Exeter record, D. B. iv. 390: 'Tenuerunt 3 tegni pro
4 mansionibus, et Robertus habet illas pro 1 mansione.'
[435] D. B. i. 169 b. Similar interlineations in i. 98.
[436] D. B. i. 148; on f. 149 is a similar case.
[437] D. B. i. 45 b.
[438] D. B. i. 280 b.
[439] In several passages in D. B. the word seems to be _manerius_.
[440] D. B. ii. 96 b: 'Huic manerio iacebant 3 liberi homines, unus
tenuit dim. hidam et potuit abire sine licentia domini ipsius
mansionis.'
[441] D. B. i. 149, Wicombe.
[442] D. B. ii. 38 b, Hersam.
[443] D. B. i. 174 b, Poiwic.
[444] D. B. i. 268, Gretford.
[445] D. B. ii. 350 b.
[446] D. B. ii. 263: 'sed fuerunt in aula S. Edmundi.'
[447] D. B. i. 337 b.
[448] D. B. ii. 408 b: 'cum soca et saca super dominium hallae
tantum.'
[449] D. B. i. 45, Wicheham, Werste.
[450] D. B. i. 20, Waliland.
[451] D. B. i. 11 b, Acres.
[452] D. B. i. 26 b, Eldretune.
[453] D. B. i. 27, Percinges.
[454] D. B. i. 284 b, Ættune.
[455] D. B. ii. 29 b, 30 b.
[456] D. B. i. 307 b, Burghedurum; 308, Ternusc.
[457] D. B. i. 63: 'Ipse quoque transportavit hallam et alias domos
et pecuniam in alio manerio.'
[458] D. B. i. 338 b: 'Ad huius manerii aulam pertinent Catenai et
Usun 4 car. terrae ad geldum. Terra ad 8 carucas. Ibi in
dominio 2 carucae et 20 villani et 15 sochemanni et 10
bordarii habentes 9 carucas. Ibi 360 acre prati. Ad eundem
manerium iacet hec soca:--In Linberge 4 car. terrae etc.'
[459] Throughout Yorkshire the phrase is common, 'Totum manerium
_x._ leu. long. et _y._ leu. lat.'
[460] D. B. i. 128.
[461] D. B. i. 128 b.
[462] D. B. i. 127.
[463] D. B. i. 128 b.
[464] D. B. i. 180.
[465] Compare the cases in Seebohm, Village Community, 267.
[466] D. B. i. 163.
[467] If we mistake not, the Osleuuorde of the record is Ashleworth,
which, though some miles to the north of Gloucester, either
still is, or but lately was, a detached piece of the Berkeley
hundred.
[468] D. B. i. 163.
[469] D. B. i. 163 b: 'Hanc terram dedit regina Rogerio de Buslei et
geldabat pro 4 hidis in Tedechesberie.'
[470] D. B. i. 87 b; iv. 161.
[471] Eyton, Somerset, ii. 34.
[472] D. B. i. 101 b; iv. 107.
[473] D. B. i. 41.
[474] D. B. i. 230.
[475] D. B. i. 338-9.
[476] D. B. i. 220, Tingdene.
[477] D. B. ii. 15 b, 17 b.
[478] D. B. ii. 385 b.
[479] The form _bereuita_ is exceedingly common, but must, we think,
be due to a mistake; _c_ has been read as _t_.