Manorialism or
Seigneurialism or
Feudal Society was the organizing principle of
rural economy and society widely practiced in
medieval western and parts of central
Europe. Manorialism was characterised by the vesting
of legal and economic power in a lord, supported economically from
his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of
a legally subject part of the peasant population under his
jurisdiction. These obligations could be payable in several ways,
in labor (the French term
corvée is conventionally applied),
in kind, or, on rare occasions, in
coin.
Manorialism died slowly. The last feudal dues in France were
abolished at the
French
Revolution. In parts of eastern Germany, the
Rittergut
manors of
Junkers remained until World War
II.
Historical development and geographical distribution
The term is most often used with reference to medieval Western
Europe. Antecedents of the system can be traced to the rural
economy of the later
Roman Empire. With
a declining birthrate and population, labor was the key factor of
production. Successive administrations tried to stabilize the
imperial economy by freezing the social structure into place: sons
were to succeed their fathers in their trade.
Councillors were forbidden to resign, and
coloni, the
cultivators of land, were not to move from the
demesne they were attached to. They were on their
way to becoming
serfs. Several factors
conspired to merge the status of former slaves and former free
farmers into a dependent class of such
coloni. Laws of
Constantine I around 325 both
reinforced the negative semi-servile status of the
coloni
and limited their rights to sue in the courts. Their numbers were
augmented by barbarian
foederati, who were permitted to
settle within the imperial boundaries.
As the Germanic kingdoms succeeded Roman authority in the West in
the fifth century, Roman landlords were often simply replaced by
Gothic or Germanic ones, with little change to the underlying
situation.
The
process of rural self-sufficiency was given an abrupt boost in the
eighth century, when normal trade in the Mediterranean
Sea
was disrupted. The thesis put forward by
Henri Pirenne, disputed by many,
supposes that the
Arab conquests forced the
medieval economy into even greater ruralisation and gave rise to
the classic feudal pattern of varying degrees of servile peasantry
underpinning a hierarchy of localised power centres.
History
The word derives from traditional inherited divisions of the
countryside, reassigned as local jurisdictions known as
manors or
seigneuries; each manor
being subject to a
lord (French
seigneur), usually holding his position in return for
undertakings offered to a higher lord (see
Feudalism). The lord held a manor court, governed
by public law and local custom. Not all territorial seigneurs were
secular; bishops and abbots also held lands that entailed similar
obligations.
By extension, the word
manor is sometimes used in England
to mean any home area or territory in which authority is held,
often in a police or criminal context.
In the generic plan of a medieval manor from
Shepherd's
Historical Atlas, the strips of individually-worked land in
the
open field system are
immediately apparent.
In this plan, the manor house is set slightly apart from the
village, but equally often the village grew up around the forecourt
of the manor, formerly walled, while the manor lands stretched away
outside, as still may be seen at Petworth House
. As concerns for privacy increased in the
18th century, manor houses were often located a farther distance
from the village.
For example, when a grand new house was
required by the new owner of Harlaxton Manor
, Lincolnshire, in the 1830s, the site of the
existing manor house at the edge of its village was abandoned for a
new one, isolated in its park, with the village out of
view.
In an agrarian society, the conditions of land tenure underlie all
social or economic factors. There were two legal systems of
pre-manorial landholding. One, the most common, was the system of
holding land
"allodially" in full
outright ownership. The other was a use of
precaria or
benefices, in which land was held
conditionally (the root of the English word "precarious").
To these two systems, the
Carolingian
monarchs added a third, the
aprisio, which linked
manorialism with
feudalism.
The aprisio
made its first appearance in Charlemagne's province of Septimania
in the south of France
, when
Charlemagne had to settle the Visigothic
refugees, who had fled with his retreating forces, after the
failure of his Saragossa
expedition of 778. He solved this problem by
allotting "desert" tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the
royal
fisc under direct control of the
emperor. These holdings
aprisio entailed specific
conditions.
The earliest specific aprisio grant
that has been identified was at Fontjoncouse
, near Narbonne
(see Lewis,
links). In former Roman settlements, a system of
villas, dating from Late Antiquity, was inherited by
the medieval.
Common features
Generic map of a mediaeval
manor.
William R.
Shepherd, Historical Atlas, 1923
Manors each consisted of up to three classes of land:
- Demesne, the part
directly controlled by the lord and used for the benefit of his
household and dependents;
- Dependent (serf or villein) holdings carrying the obligation
that the peasant household supply the lord with specified labour
services or a part of its output (or cash in lieu thereof), subject
to the custom attached to the holding; and
- Free peasant land, without such obligation but
otherwise subject to manorial jurisdiction and custom, and owing
money rent fixed at the time of the lease.
Additional sources of income for the lord included charges for use
of his mill, bakery or wine-press, or for the right to hunt or to
let pigs feed in his woodland, as well as court revenues and single
payments on each change of tenant. On the other side of the
account, manorial administration involved significant expenses,
perhaps a reason why smaller manors tended to rely less on villein
tenure.
Dependent holdings were held nominally by arrangement of lord and
tenant, but tenure became in practice almost universally
hereditary, with a payment made to the lord on each succession of
another member of the family. Villein land could not be abandoned,
at least until demographic and economic circumstances made flight a
viable proposition; nor could they be passed to a third party
without the lord's permission, and the customary payment.
Though not free, villeins were by no means in the same position as
slaves: they enjoyed legal rights, subject to local custom, and had
recourse to the law, subject to court charges which were an
additional source of manorial income. Sub-letting of villein
holdings was common, and labour on the demesne might be commuted
into an additional money payment, as happened increasingly from the
13th century.
This
description of a manor house at Chingford
, Essex in England was recorded in a document for
the Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral
when it was granted to Robert Le Moyne in
1265:
- He received also a sufficient and handsome hall well ceiled
with oak. On the western side is a worthy bed, on the ground, a
stone chimney, a wardrobe and a certain other small chamber; at the
eastern end is a pantry and a buttery. Between the hall and the
chapel is a sideroom. There is a decent chapel covered with tiles,
a portable altar, and a small cross. In the hall are four tables on
trestles. There are likewise a good kitchen covered with tiles,
with a furnace and ovens, one large, the other small, for cakes,
two tables, and alongside the kitchen a small house for baking.
Also a new granary covered with oak shingles, and a building in
which the dairy is contained, though it is divided. Likewise a
chamber suited for clergymen and a necessary chamber. Also a
hen-house. These are within the inner gate. Likewise outside of
that gate are an old house for the servants, a good table, long and
divided, and to the east of the principal building, beyond the
smaller stable, a solar for the use of the servants. Also a
building in which is contained a bed, also two barns, one for wheat
and one for oats. These buildings are enclosed with a moat, a wall,
and a hedge. Also beyond the middle gate is a good barn, and a
stable of cows, and another for oxen, these old and ruinous. Also
beyond the outer gate is a pigstye.
Variation among manors
Like
feudalism which, together with
manorialism, formed the legal and organizational framework of
feudal society, manorial structures were not uniform. In the later
Middle Ages, areas of incomplete or non-existent manorialization
persisted while the manorial economy underwent substantial
development with changing economic conditions.
Not all manors contained all three kinds of land: typically,
demesne accounted for roughly a third of the
arable area, and
villein holdings rather
more; but some manors consisted solely of demesne, others solely of
peasant holdings. The proportion of unfree and free tenures could
likewise vary greatly, with more or less reliance on wage labour
for agricultural work on the demesne.
The proportion of the cultivated area in demesne tended to be
greater in smaller manors, while the share of villein land was
greater in large manors, providing the lord of the latter with a
larger supply of obligatory labour for demesne work. The proportion
of free tenements was generally less variable, but tended to be
somewhat greater on the smaller manors.
Manors varied similarly in their geographical arrangement: most did
not coincide with a single village, but rather consisted of parts
of two or more villages, most of the latter containing also parts
of at least one other manor. This situation sometimes led to
replacement by cash payments or their equivalents in kind of the
demesne labour obligations of those peasants living furthest from
the lord's estate.
As with peasant plots, the demesne was not a single territorial
unit, but consisted rather of a central house with neighbouring
land and estate buildings, plus strips dispersed through the manor
alongside free and villein ones: in addition, the lord might lease
free tenements belonging to neighbouring manors, as well as holding
other manors some distance away to provide a greater range of
produce.
Nor were manors held necessarily by lay lords rendering military
service (or again, cash in lieu) to their superior: a substantial
share (estimated by value at 17% in
England in 1086) belonged directly to the
king, and a greater proportion (rather more than a quarter) were
held by
bishoprics and
monasteries.
Ecclesiastical manors tended to be larger,
with a significantly greater villein area than neighbouring lay
manors.
The effect of circumstances on manorial economy is complex and at
times contradictory: upland conditions tended to preserve peasant
freedoms (livestock husbandry in particular being less
labour-intensive and therefore less demanding of villein services);
on the other hand, some upland areas of Europe showed some of the
most oppressive manorial conditions, while lowland eastern England
is credited with an exceptionally large free peasantry, in part a
legacy of Scandinavian settlement.
Similarly, the spread of
money economy
stimulated the replacement of labour services by money payments,
but the growth of the money supply and resulting inflation after
1170 initially led nobles to take back leased estates and to
re-impose labour dues as the value of fixed cash payments declined
in real terms.
See also
References
External links
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