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Landlords view of a manor.

Contemporary in date with the Hundred Rolls is the anonymous work bearing the title of 'Fleta,' which may be described as the vade mecum of the landlords of the time of Edward I. It was designed to put them in possession of necessary legal knowledge; and mixed up with this are practical directions regarding the management of their estates. The writer advises landlords on taking possession of their manors to have a survey made of their property, so that they may know the extent of their rights and income.

If in the Hundred Rolls we have photographic details of hundreds of individual manors surveyed [p046] for purposes of royal taxation, so here is a picture of an ordinary or typical manor—a generalisation of the ordinary features of a manor—drawn by a contemporary hand, and regarding all things from a landlord's point of view.

The manor as described in Fleta is a territorial unit, with its own courts and local customs known only on the spot. Therefore the extent is to be taken upon the testimony of 'faithful and sworn tenants of the lord.' And inquiry is to be made43—

Survey of a manor.

 (1) Of castles and buildings in the demesne (intrinsecis) within and without the moat, with gardens, curtilages, dovecotes, fishponds, &c.

 (2) What fields (campi) and culturæ there are in demesne, and how many acres of arable in each cultura of meadow and of pasture.

 (3) What common pasture there is outside the demesne (forinseca), and what beasts the lord can place thereon [he, like his tenants, being as to this limited in his rights by custom].

 (4) Of parks and demesne woods, which the lord at his will can cultivate and reclaim (assartare).

 (5) Of woods outside the demesne (forinsecis), in which others have common rights, how much the lord may approve.

 (6) Of pannage, herbage, and honey, and all other issues of the forests, woods, moors, heaths, and wastes.

 (7) Of mills [belonging to the lord, and having a monopoly of grinding for the tenants at fixed charges], fishponds, rivers (ripariis), and fisheries several and common.

 (8) Of pleas and perquisites belonging to the county, manor, and forest courts.

 (9) Of churches belonging to the lord's advowson.

 (10) Of heriots, fairs, markets, tolls, day-works (operationes), services, foreign (forinseci) customs, and gifts (exhenniis).

 (11) Of warrens, liberties, parks, coneyburrows, wardships, reliefs, and yearly fees.

Then regarding the tenants—

Free tenants.

Villein tenants

 (1) De libere tenentibus, or free tenants, how many are intrinseci and how many forinseci; what lands they hold of the lord, and [p047] what of others, and by what service; whether by socage, or by military service, or by fee farm, or 'in eleemosynam'; who hold by charter, and who not; what rents they pay; which of them do suit at the lord's court, &c.; and what accrues to the lord at their death.

 (2) De custumariis, or villein tenants; how many there are, and what is their suit; how much each has, and what it is worth, both de antiquo dominico and de novo perquisito; to what amount they can be tallaged without reducing them to poverty and ruin; what is the value of their 'operationes' and 'consuetudines'—their day-works and customary duties—and what rent they pay; and which of them can be tallaged 'ratione sanguinis nativi,' and who not.

Officers.

Then there follows a statement of the duties of the usual officials of the manor.

The seneschal, or steward;

First there is the seneschal,44 or steward, whose duty it is to hold the Manor Courts and the View of Frankpledge, and there to inquire if there be any withdrawals of customs, services, and rents, or of suits to the lord's courts, markets, and mills, and as to alienations of lands. He is also to check the amount of seed required by the præpositus for each manor, for under the seneschal there may be several manors.

who arranges the ploughing and the plough teams.

On his appointment he must make himself acquainted with the condition of the manorial ploughs and plough teams. He must see that the land is properly arranged, whether on the three-field or the two-field system. If it be divided into three parts, 180 acres should go to each carucate, viz. 60 acres to be ploughed in winter, 60 in Lent, and 60 in summer for fallow. If in two parts, there should be 160 acres to the carucate, half for fallow, half for winter and Lent sowing, i.e. 80 acres in each of the two 'fields.' [p048]

Besides the manorial ploughs and plough teams he must know also how many tenant or villein ploughs (carucæ adjutrices) there are, and how often they are bound to aid the lord in each manor.

He is also to inquire as to the stock in each manor, whereof an inventory indented is to be drawn up between him and the serjeant; and as to any deficiency of beasts, which he is at once to make good with the lord's consent.

The præpositus.

The seneschal thus had jurisdiction over all the manors of the lord. But each single manor should have its own præpositus.

The best husbandman is to be elected by the villata, or body of tenants, as præpositus, and he is to be responsible for the cultivation of the arable land. He must see that the ploughs are yoked early in the morning—both the demesne and the villein ploughs—and that the land is properly ploughed (pure et conjunctim) and sown. He is a villein tenant, and acts on behalf of the villeins, but he is overlooked by the lord's bailiff.

The bailiff.

The bailiff's45 duties are stated to be—To rise early and have the ploughs yoked, then walk in the fields to see that all is right. He is to inspect the ploughs, whether those of the demesne or the villein or auxiliary ploughs, seeing that they be not unyoked before their day's work ends, failing which he will be called to account. At sowing-time the bailiff, præpositus, and reaper must go with the ploughs through the whole day's work until they have completed their proper quantity of ploughing for the day, [p049] which is to be measured, and if the ploughmen have made any errors or defaults, and can make no excuses, the reaper is to see that such faults do not go uncorrected and unpunished.

Such is the picture, given by Fleta, of the manorial machine at work grinding through its daily labour on the days set apart for service on the lord's demesne.

The other side of the picture, the work of the villani for themselves on other days, the yoking of their oxen in the common plough team, and the ploughing and sowing of their own scattered strips; whether this was arranged with equal regard to rigid custom, or whether in Fleta's time the co-operation had become to some extent broken up, so that each villein tenant made his own arrangements by contract with his fellows, or otherwise—this inferior side of the picture is left undrawn.

In the meantime, returning to the question of the holdings in villenage, an additional reason for the variations in their acreage is found in the statement already alluded to, viz. that the extent of the actual carucate, or land of one plough team, was dependent, among other things, upon whether the system of husbandry was the two-field or the three-field system, each plough team being able to cultivate a larger acreage on the former than on the latter system.