The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. Frederic William Maitland

be by compulsory processes which will eject the wrongful in favour of the rightful occupant. The tenant in villeinage does not scruple to say that he is seised of the land de iure “according to the custom of the manor,”⁴⁹⁷ though his lord may be seised of it according to the law of the king’s courts. Such evidence as we have goes to show that, when his lord was not concerned, he was well enough protected in his holding. The rolls of manorial courts bear witness to a great deal of litigation concerning the villein tenements; it seems to be conducted with strict regularity; the procedure does not err on the side of formlessness; it is rigid, it is captious; the court is no court of equity which can overlook a pleader’s blunder and do natural justice; it administers custom. No doubt there are cash transactions between the lord and the litigants; the lord has procedural advantages for sale; but then so has the king. There is nothing disgraceful, nothing illegal, in buying the right to have an inquest, a good inquest, nor even in promising an augmented price if the verdict be favourable. Then as to the case between lord and tenant, the tenant cannot sue the lord in the lord’s court; the tenant in villeinage ejected by the lord has no remedy anywhere. But is this, we may [p.343] ask, a denial of legal right? The king disseises the Earl of Gloucester; the earl has no remedy, no remedy anywhere; yet we do not deny that the honour of Gloucester is the earl’s by law or that in disseising him the king will break the law.

Evidence of the “extents.”A good proof that the lords in general felt themselves bound more or less conclusively by the terms of the customary tenures is to be found in the care they took that those terms should be recorded. From time to time an “extent” was made of the manor. A jury of tenants, often of unfreemen, was sworn to set forth the particulars of each tenancy and its verdict condescended to the smallest details. Such extents were made in the interest of the lords, who were anxious that all due services should be done; but they imply that other and greater services are not due, and that the customary tenants, even though they be unfreemen, owe these services for their tenements, no less and no more. Statements to the effect that the tenants are not bound to do services of a particular kind are not very uncommon.

Attempt to define villein tenure.As characteristics of villein tenure we have therefore these two features:—it is not protected by the king’s courts; in general it is protected by another court, the court of the lord, though even there it is not protected against the lord. Still as a matter of legal theory we cannot regard these features as the essence of the tenure. We should invert the order of logic were we to say that this tenure is villein because the king’s justices treat it as a mere tenure at will; rather they treat it as a mere tenure at will because it is a villein, an unfree, tenure. We must look therefore in this as in other cases to the services which the tenant performs, if we are to define the nature of his tenure. He holds in villeinage because he performs villein services.

The manorial arrangement.A brief digression into a domain which belongs rather to economic than to legal history here becomes inevitable. The phenomena of medieval agriculture are now attracting the attention that they deserve: here we are only concerned with them in so far as some knowledge of them must be presupposed by any exposition of the law of the thirteenth century.⁴⁹⁸ Postponing until a later time any debate as to whether the term manor bore a technical meaning, [p.344] we observe that this term is constantly used to describe a proprietary unit of common occurrence:—the well-to-do landholder holds a manor or many manors. Now speaking very generally we may say that a man who holds a manor has in the first place a house or homestead which is occupied by himself, his bailiffs or servants. Along with this he holds cultivable land, which is in the fullest sense (so far as feudal theory permits) his own; it is his demesne land. Then also, as part of the same complex of rights, he holds land which is holden of him by tenants, some of whom, it may be, are freeholders, holding in socage or by military service, while the remainder of them, usually the large majority of them, hold in villeinage, by a merely customary tenure. In the terms used to describe these various lands we notice a certain instructive ambiguity. The land that the lord himself occupies and of which he takes the fruits he indubitably holds “in demesne”; the land holden of him by his freehold tenants he indubitably does not hold “in demesne”; his freehold tenants hold it in demesne, unless indeed, as may well be the case, they have yet other freeholders below them. But as to the lands holden of him by villein tenure, the use of words seems to fluctuate; at one moment he is said to hold and be seised of them in demesne, at the next they are sharply distinguished from his demesne lands, that term being reserved for those portions of the soil in which no tenant free or villein has any rights. In short, language reflects the dual nature of tenure in villeinage; it is tenure and yet it is not tenure. The king’s courts, giving no protection to the tenant, say that the lord is seised in demesne; but the manorial custom must distinguish between the lands holden in villeinage and those lands which are occupied by the lord and which in a narrower sense of the word are his demesne.⁴⁹⁹

[p.345]The field system. We have usually therefore in the manor lands of three kinds, (1) the demesne strictly so called, (2) the land of the lord’s freehold tenants, (3) the villenagium, the land holden of the lord by villein or customary tenure. Now in the common case all these lands are bound together into a single whole by two economic bonds. In the first place, the demesne lands are cultivated wholly or in part by the labour of the tenants of the other lands, labour which they are bound to supply by reason of their tenure. A little labour in the way of ploughing and reaping is got out of the freehold tenants; much labour of many various kinds is obtained from the tenants in villeinage, so much in many cases that the lord has but small, if any, need to hire labourers. Then in the second place, these various tenements lie intermingled; neither the lord’s demesne nor the tenant’s tenement can be surrounded by one ring-fence. The lord has his house and homestead; each tenant has his house with more or less curtilage surrounding it; but the arable portions of the demesne and of the various other tenements lie mixed up together in the great open fields. There will be two or three or perhaps more great fields, and each tenement will consist of a number of small strips, of an acre or half-acre apiece, dissipated about in each of these fields.⁵⁰⁰ These fields are subjected to a common course of agriculture, a two-field system or a three-field system, so that a whole field will lie idle at one time, or be sown with winter seed or, as the case may be, with spring seed. After harvest and until the time for tilling comes, the lord and the tenants turn their beasts to graze over the whole field.

The virgates.Then we further notice that the various tenements, at least those held in villeinage, are supposed to be of equal extent and of equal value, or rather to fall into a few classes, the members of each class being equal among themselves. Thus it is usual to find a number [p.346] of tenants in villeinage each of whom is said to hold a virgate or yard of land. Each of them has his house and the same number of strips of arable land; each of them does precisely the same service to his lord. Then there may appear a class of half-virgaters, each of whom does about half what is done by a virgater; and there may be classes which have smaller tenements but which yet have some arable land. Then, most likely, there will be a class of cottagers without any arable; but the cottage and croft of one of them will be regarded as equal to the cottage and croft of another and will provide the lord with the same services. And we sometimes seem to see that the distribution of the arable strips is so arranged as to equalize the value of the various tenements. All the virgates are to be equal in value as well as equal in acreage so far as is possible. One virgater must not have more than his share of the best land. The strips have been distributed with some regularity, so that a strip of B’ s virgate will always have a strip of A’ s to the right and a strip of C’ s to the left of it. Then again, the manor will probably comprise meadow land and pasture land. Each virgate may have a piece of meadow annexed to it, the meadow being treated as an appurtenance of the arable land; or again, some of the meadows may be divided each year by lot between the various tenants, and the lord may have certain strips