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The Origins of the Manor in England1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

T. H. Aston
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Extract

COMPARATIVELY little has been written recently on the origins of the manor. The exposition given by Maitland and Vinogradoff and closely followed by Sir Frank Stenton has been modified for certain areas; it has seldom been questioned as a whole. The basis of early society, according to this view, was the free ceorl, owning absolutely one hide of land or its equivalent, and owing only royal dues, such folk-worthy and law-worthy men being associated together in free, lordless and nucleated villages. The gap between these men and medieval villeins, between these free villages and the manor, was bridged in a variety of ways. Grants of royal rights to ecclesiastics and laymen exposed the ceorls to the pressure of great lords who took advantage of economic insecurity, wars, famines, plagues, commendation and similar factors to depress them so that, in the end, in place of their free ownership of a hide, they came to hold normally between a quarter and a whole virgate or less, on most onerous and servile terms. Some place was, indeed, allowed to the creation of tenancies by lords themselves, but this was largely incidental. ‘The central course of Old English social development’, wrote Sir Frank Stenton, ‘may be described as the process by which a peasantry, at first composed essentially of free men, acknowledging no lord below the king, gradually lost economic and personal independence.’

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Research Article
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Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 8 , January 1958 , pp. 59 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1958

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References

page 59 note 2 Maitland, F. W., Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, 1897)Google Scholar; Vinogradoff, P., The Growth of the Manor, 2nd edn. (1911)Google Scholar; Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1947)Google Scholar.

page 59 note 3 Op. cit., p. 463. Cf. Vinogradoff, , op. cit., p. 235Google Scholar.

page 60 note 1 By contrast, for ceorls with lords, see Northumbrian Priests' Law, comparing cc. 50, 53, 56, 59, 60, Liebermann, F., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1903–1916) [hereafter cited as Liebermann], i. 383 fGoogle Scholar.; cf. Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, A. J., 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 1956)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as RC.], no. ex. For freemen see Laws of Ine, c. 3.2; cf. c. 70.

page 60 note 2 Op. cit., p. 326. Cf. Stenton, , op. cit., pp. 463 fGoogle Scholar.

page 60 note 3 Liebermann, i. 456 f., 460 f. Cf. Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, ed. Kemble, J. M. (1839–1848)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as KCD.], no. mcclxxxii; Select English Historical Documents, ed. Harmer, F. E. (Cambridge, 1914)Google Scholar, no. ii.

page 61 note 1 Op. cit., pp. 291, 302.

page 61 note 2 e.g. Stenton, , op. cit., p. 473Google Scholar; Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. Douglas, D. C. (1932), p. cxxxiiiGoogle Scholar. And compare the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum (Liebermann, , i. 444–53)Google Scholar with twelfth century estate surveys.

page 61 note 3 Postan, M. M., ‘The Chronology of Labour Services’, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, 4th Ser., XX (1937), 169–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 61 note 4 Hoyt, R. S., ‘Farm of the Manor and Community of the Vill in Domesday Book’, Speculum, XXX (1955), 147–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, gives examples of demesne leasing.

page 62 note 1 e.g. Chadwick's, H. M. powerful remarks in The Origin of the English Nation (Cambridge, 1907)Google Scholar, ch. 7.

page 62 note 2 Laws, Introduction c. 49. 7; cc. I, 4.

page 62 note 3 e.g. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a. 757A–E.

page 62 note 4 Bede, , Epistola ad Ecgbertum Episcopum, c. 11, ed. Plummer, C. (Oxford, 1896), i. 415Google Scholar; Historia Abbatum, c. I (ibid., 364).

page 62 note 5 Stenton, F. M., The Latin Charters of the Anglo-Saxon Period (Oxford, 1955). pp. 59 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 62 note 6 cc. 24, 32, 51, 63–6. A ‘functional’ criterion appears in c. 33. Cf. the provisions on changes of rank in Liebermann, i. 456–61.

page 63 note 1 Chadwick, H. M., Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, 1905), Excursus v, pp. 367–77Google Scholar. Cf. Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. de, W.Birch, G. (1885–1893)Google Scholar [hereafter cited as BCS.], no. 600 (cited by Stenton, , op. cit., p. 61Google Scholar n. I).

page 63 note 2 König Alfreds des Grossen Bearbeitung der Soliloquien des Augusdnus, ed. Endter, W., Bibl. der Angelsächsischen Prosa, xi (Hamburg, 1922), 2Google Scholar.

page 63 note 3 Loyn, H. R., ‘Gesiths and Thegns in Anglo-Saxon England …’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxx (1955), 533–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 63 note 4 Bede, , Epist. ad Ecgb. Episc., c. 11 (ed. Plummer, , i. 415)Google Scholar; Hist. Eccles., iii. c. 14 (ibid., 156,11. 2 ff.); Beowulf, 11. 837–40, 1125 ff.; Laws of Ine, cc. 63, 68. Note also the practice of burying noblemen in ordinary village cemeteries, le as shown by finds of swords, etc.

page 63 note 5 Op. cit., pp. 230–42.

page 64 note 1 It is, of course, a very long time before documents of transfer will distinguish between land in hand (demesne) and tenanted land. I use ‘land’ to cover both.

page 64 note 2 Op. cit., p. 234.

page 64 note 3 e.g. grants of dues on ships. Or BCS., no. 416.

page 64 note 4 e.g. Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. Farrer, W. (Edinburgh, 1914–1916)Google Scholar, i. no. 8. Cf. BCS., no. n 12, and R.C., nos. liv, lxxxiv.

page 64 note 5 e.g. BCS., nos. 1077–8, and RC, no. xxxiii; Davidson, J. M., ‘On Some Anglo-Saxon Charters at Exeter’, Jl. of the Brit. Arch. Ass., xxxix (1883), 285–9Google Scholar; B.C.S., no. 967, if genuine, is probably a confirmation, see Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock, D. (Cambridge, 1930) [hereafter cited as W.], pp. 106 fGoogle Scholar.

page 65 note 1 Op. cit., p. 232.

page 65 note 2 Leibermann, i. 119, ii (2). 297c; Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 309Google Scholar; English Historical Documents, c. 500–1042, ed. Whitelock, D. (1955), p. 371Google Scholar.

page 65 note 3 Op. cit., p. 238 n. 1; cf. The Laws of The Earliest English Kings, ed. Attenborough, F. L. (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 56–9, 192Google Scholar.

page 65 note 4 Vinogradoff, , The Growth of the Manor, p. 128Google Scholar; English Society in the Eleventh Century (Oxford, 1908), pp. 193, 195Google Scholar; Seebohm, F., The English Village Community, 4th edn. (1905), pp. 128, 136 fGoogle Scholar.

page 66 note 1 Douglas, D. C., The Social Structure of Medieval East Anglia (Oxford, 1927), pp. 34, 48 f., 188 n. 1, 194Google Scholar. The one use of these terms outside East Anglia referred to on p. 48 n. 8 is an obvious misplacement in the Ramsey Cartulary, and belongs to the following survey of Brancaster (Norfolk).

page 66 note 2 c. 6, Liebermann, i. 376.

page 66 note 3 RC, no. cix. Domesday Book [hereafter cited as DB.], i. 164ai.

page 66 note 4 The other meanings of this ‘overworked term’ ( Stenton, , op. cit., p. 477Google Scholar n. 1) need not concern us.

page 66 note 5 RC, App. I, no. iii (p. 234).

page 66 note 6 See Stenton, loc. cit.

page 67 note 1 The frequency with which the inland is a round 40 or 50 per cent, of the total assessment of a hundred in the Northants Geld Roll makes an interesting comparison with Ine's laws.

page 67 note 2 RC, no. cix. Although it has often been connected with King Eadwig's grant of Tidenham in 956 (BCS., no. 927) or with the lease of the manor to Archbishop Stigand, datable to 1061–5 (RC., no. cxvii), there is no convincing reason for associating it with either; they do, however, provide limiting dates, since the abbey of Bath did not regain possession after the lease.

page 67 note 3 RC, no. civ (p. 194); but cf. byrigland in ibid., App. I, no. iii (p. 234).

page 67 note 4 W., no. xi. But cf. Jolliffe's, J. E. A. remark, Eng. Hist. Rev., xlvi (1931), 319Google Scholar; and his Pre-Feudal England: the Jutes (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar, c. I.

page 67 note 5 BCS., no. 208, probably otherwise genuine; but cf. Jolliffe, , op. cit., p. 75Google Scholar. Cf. RC, no. lxxxi.

page 67 note 6 I cannot agree with Sir Frank Stenton's interpretation of KCD., no. dcccclxxi, in his Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw (Oxford, 1910), pp. 37 ffGoogle Scholar. Even allowing that the oddities of this charter do not put it out of consideration for eleventh century conditions, the grant of ‘terram nostram de Hikelinge et terram de Kinildetune cum firma et seruitio, sicut habetur in dominio nostro’ hardly indicates absence of demesne. The transaction is of a common enough type; a donor wishes to continue in occupation and becomes in effect a lessee for life. No direct light is cast on the structure of the estates, except (in my view) to hint that there was land in demesne.

page 68 note 1 e.g. even allowing for the effects of a hard winter, BCS., nos. 618–19, suggest a proportionately small demesne.

page 68 note 2 For these terms, see e.g. Laws of Ine, cc. 64–6; RC, no. cix; W., no. xi; BCS., no. 208 (above, p. 67); The Burton Abbey Twelfth Century Surveys, ed. Bridgeman, C. G. O. (Wm. Salt Archaeological Soc, 1916)Google Scholar, passim. Cf. geneatland in II Edgar, c. I.I.

page 68 note 3 See especially R.C., no. cix, where gesett land and gafolland coincide.

page 69 note 1 c. 2. See Vinogradoff, , The Growth of the Manor, pp. 132, 240 fGoogle Scholar.; Davis, R. H. C., ‘East Anglia and the Danelaw’, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, 5th Ser., V (1955), 33 fGoogle Scholar. Compare, for example, Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 259 n. 1Google Scholar. If the phrase implies other ceorls who did not dwell on gafolland, these would presumably include those without any land or dwelling only on the inland of an estate.

page 69 note 2 W., no. iii; RC, no. cix. Compare the gafolkinders in Kent.

page 69 note 3 Slaves seem normally to have been landless in England. For exceptions, see, e.g., Finberg, H. P. R., Tavistock Abbey (Cambridge, 1951), p. 60Google Scholar; W., no. xxxiv (p. 88, 11. 22); Liber Niger Mon. S. Petri de Burgo, ed. T. Stapleton (Camden Soc, xlvii, 1849), p. 163 (Castor, Northants). Landed slaves may have been more numerous earlier.

page 69 note 4 Cf. Alfred's, use of ceorl to translate libertinus, King Alfred's Orosius, ed. Sweet, H. (Early Eng. Text Soc, lxxix, 1883), p. 162Google Scholar.

page 69 note 5 Postan, M. M., The Famulus: The Estate Labourer in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries (Econ. Hist. Rev., Suppl. no. 2, 1954), pp. 5–14Google Scholar.

page 69 note 6 Ellis, H., A General Introduction to Domesday Book (1833), ii. 511Google Scholar, gives 858 coliberti and 62 buri. There is none recorded in Essex despite the large manumissions there between 1066 and 1086.

page 70 note 1 Laws of Æthelberht, c. 26. Alfred and Guthrum's Treaty, c. 2. Is this why the obviously important class of Danish liesengas (ON. leysingjar) virtually disappear (but see W., no. xxxvi)?

page 70 note 2 See Chadwick, , Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions, pp. 85 ffGoogle Scholar.; Finberg, H. P. R., Roman and Saxon Withington (Leicester, 1955), p. 36Google Scholar n. 4.

page 70 note 3 e.g. Laws of Ine, c. 42 (cf. place-names such as Charlton), which, however, warrants no deductions as to their tenurial independence, etc. See also Laws of Æthelberht, c. 27, Alfred, c. 40.

page 70 note 4 Select Eng. Hist. Docs., ed. Harmer, no. ii (though Abba may not have been a ceorl, for ‘min wærgeld twa ðusenda’ is very obscure); RC, no. cx.

page 71 note 1 Cf. RC, no. cix, in which the gesett land is described in yards. For regularity of village plan, see Sutton Courtenay (Berks.) and SirStenton's, Frank remarks, op. cit., p. 283Google Scholar n. 3.

page 71 note 2 c. 67; Liebermann, i. 446 ff.

page 71 note 3 W., no. iii (? c. 950). And see n. 5.

page 71 note 4 Harmer, , op. cit., no. xviiGoogle Scholar.

page 71 note 5 And see Laws of Ine, cc. 63–6, 68. By contrast, see the cases of Bupton (Derbys.) and Longdon (Staffs.) in Wulfric Spot's will, W., no. xvii; and the freedmen at Charlton (Dorset), W., no. iii.

page 72 note 1 Förster, M., Der Flussname Themse und seine Sippe (München, 1941), App. I, no. 3, pp. 794 fGoogle Scholar. It is possible, if unlikely, that these two persons were still slaves, though holding geburland.

page 72 note 2 A Hand-Book to the Land Charters and Other Saxonic Documents, ed. Earle, J. (Oxford, 1888), pp. 275 ffGoogle Scholar. Cf. restrictions on the service of a manumitted slave in W., no. iii, p. 10, 11. 28 f. On the other hand, see Laws of Wihtred, c. 8.

page 72 note 3 Cf. Lets Willelme, c. 29 (Liebermann, i., 512).

page 72 note 4 e.g. in Essex between 1066 and 1086, as DB. shows.

page 72 note 5 At Wallop (Hants) (i. 38bii) and perhaps at Cosham (Hants) (i. 38aii), DB. equates coliberti and buri, but this cannot be applied generally. Normally the DB. colibertus is clearly a very small holder, sometimes perhaps a ‘service famulus’.

page 72 note 6 Cf. cotseti and the like settled on former demesne land on some manors of Burton Abbey in the early twelfth century (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc, 1916, e.g. p. 235A).

page 73 note 1 Hist, et Cart. Mon. S. Petri Gloucestriae, ed. Hart, W. H. (Rolls Series, 1863–1867), i. 77, 124Google Scholar; iii. 274. Mr. Finberg kindly drew my attention to this.

page 74 note 1 The Place-Names of Berkshire (Reading, 1911), p. 25. Cf. his Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw, pp. 90 f.

page 74 note 2 See especially Tengstrand, E., A Contribution to the Study of Genitival Composition in Old English Place-Names (Uppsala, 1940)Google Scholar.

page 74 note 3 Cf. BCS., no. 449. A considerable number of the landowners of 1066 gave their names to villages. Cf. the use of monothematic (probably upper class) personal names in early place-name formation.

page 74 note 4 Smith, A. H., English Place-Name Elements (Eng. Place-Name Soc, xxv–xxvi, 1956), i. 300Google Scholar.

page 75 note 1 See 0Ekwall, E., English Place-Names in -ing (Lund, 1923), pp. 125 fGoogle Scholar.

page 75 note 2 Ekwall, , op. cit., pp. 106–26; Smith, op. cit., s.v. -ingasGoogle Scholar; Smith, A. H., ‘Place-Names and the Anglo-Saxon Settlement’, Proc. of the British Academy, xlii (1956), 73–88Google Scholar.

page 75 note 3 See, e.g., Smith, English Place-Name Elements, s.v. prop.

page 75 note 4 The Victoria History of the County of Sussex, ed. Page, W. and Salzman, L. F. (1905–), i. 357 fGoogle Scholar.

page 76 note 1 RC, no. cix.

page 76 note 2 BCS., no. 366. Cf. the topography of Welford (Berks.) at a later date, see DB., i. 58bii; Douglas, D. C., ‘Some Early Surveys from the Abbey of Abingdon’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xliv (1929), 625CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chron. Mon. de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson, J. (Rolls Series, 1858), ii. 301–6, 310Google Scholar.

page 76 note 3 RC., no. civ.

page 76 note 4 RC., no. lv. Cf. Ashford (Kent) in W., no. xxxii. For an early Kentish example, BCS., nos. 97, 98, on which see Ward, G., ‘The Wilmington Charter of A.D. 700’, Arch. Cantiana, xlviii (1936), 11–28Google Scholar.

page 77 note 1 e.g. RC., no. liv.

page 77 note 2 As these remarks indicate, it may be difficult to know the precise effects of a particular transaction. But the conclusions are unaffected by this slight uncertainty over some of the examples.

page 78 note 1 Since, however, partible inheritance is the only cause of division which can be readily detected outside the wills, its importance may appear comparatively greater than it was.

page 78 note 2 e.g. W., no. x.

page 78 note 3 DB., i. 168bii. The effects would be heightened if the brothers then commended themselves to different lords, e.g. DB., i. 144ai (Stone, Bucks.), 152H (Datchet, Bucks.). For division between co-heiresses, see, e.g., DB., i. 32ai (Weybridge, Surrey), or between mixed heirs, e.g. W., no. xxi (Butcombe, Somerset). A partial division only might be made, e.g. DB., i. 45ai (Wickham, Hants). Cf. the duplicate entries for Chardford (Hants) in DB., i. 44bii, 46ai, for the difficulty of knowing if a physical division was made.

page 79 note 1 W., no. xiii; and, e.g., no. xxiv (Roydon, Norfolk).

page 79 note 2 W., no. xiii.

page 79 note 3 e.g. RC, no. xlvi, and p. 343 for other references.

page 79 note 4 e.g. W., no. xx (Chalton, Hants).

page 79 note 5 W., no. xiv.

page 79 note 6 W., no. xxix, in which the size of reward, when stated, is small. See also no. xxxix (Limber, Lines.). A follower might, of course, receive more than one small reward.

page 79 note 7 Possibly those in DB., i. 39bi, 54ai, 63bi.

page 80 note 1 W., no. xxxi and pp. 194 f., for the other references. For another possible case see W., no. xxxi, and DB., ii. 31a (half a hide at Ongar, Essex). Partible inheritance may similarly mislead; cf. DB., i. 206aii (Gidding, Hunts.), where we are only incidentally told that the six sokemen were brothers.

page 80 note 2 e.g. W., no. xviii (Dumbleton, Glos., and Tew, Oxon.).

page 80 note 3 To relatives as well as other followers; e.g. above p. 79 n. 3; Bishop Esne's leases at Taunton, Turner, A. G. C., ‘Some Old English Passages Relating to the Episcopal Manor of Taunton’, Proc. of the Somerset Arch, and Nat. Hist. Soc, xcviii (1953), 119Google Scholar.

page 80 note 4 See Dodwell, B., ‘East Anglian Commendation’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxiii (1948), 289–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 303–6. For an exception, see, e.g., DB., i. 72aii (Highway, Wilts.).

page 80 note 5 Exceptions are not, however, uncommon in DB.; see, e.g., The Victoria History of Wiltshire, ed. Pugh, R. B. and Crittall, E. (1953–), ii. 82 fGoogle Scholar.

page 80 note 6 For dispersed thegnlands, see, e.g., RC, nos. xliii, xlvi, lxv, lxvii; BCS., nos. 1204–5. Thegnlands often occupy only part of a settlement in DB., e.g. in Wiltshire; similarly among Bishop Oswald's leases, e.g. RC, nos. lvi, lviii.

page 81 note 1 Cf. divisions resulting from payment of soulscot in land, e.g. W., no. xix (Tardebigge, Worcs.).

page 81 note 2 RC, no. cxiv and p. 462. See also, e.g., RC, no. xxix; W., no. xxxi.

page 81 note 3 e.g. W., nos. xxxiii, xxxiv.

page 81 note 4 W., no. xxxi, DB., ii. 69a.

page 81 note 5 DB., i. 376aii. This division of forfeitures is said to apply to all the wapentake of Well.

page 81 note 6 Postan, , ‘The Chronology of Labour Services’, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc, 4th Ser., XX (1937), 169–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 81 note 7 Hoyt, , ‘Farm of the Manor and Community of the Vill’, Speculum, XXX (1955), 147–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 82 note 1 DB., i. 41bii.

page 82 note 2 Hoyt, , op. cit., pp. 152 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 82 note 3 DB., i. 233ai. Cf. i. 159bi (Orgar's holdings in Berrick Salome and Gangsdown Hill, Oxon.). Above, p. 80 n. 2.

page 82 note 4 e.g. DB., i. 159ai (Nuneham Courtenay, Oxon.). Professor Darlington's, R. R. interpretation of such entries (The Victoria Hist, of Wiltshire, ii. 83)Google Scholar cannot be sustained. They carry no implication of ‘wrongful encroachments’ on ‘the villeins’ own land'. Their purpose was to prevent lords obtaining tax-exemption for additions to demesnes.

page 82 note 5 See, e.g., Liber Eliensis, ed. Stewart, D. J. (1848), iGoogle Scholar. passim; RC, no. xl.

page 82 note 6 Dodwell, , ‘East Anglian Commendation’, Eng. Hist. Rev., lxiii (1948), 289–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar.