Now let me estimate roughly the annual value of the manor.

The annual value of cultivated land in Hertfordshire in the thirteenth century seems to have been about 4d. per acre: 800 acres of cultivated land would, at this rate, be worth £13 per annum. The value of the buildings and 1,200 acres of commons, wastes, and woods would at least raise the annual value to £20. Now £20 a year in land was reckoned the proper income for a knight, and every one having that income could be forced to take upon him the order and arms of a knight.1 And so a "knight's fee," for purposes of feudal taxation, was regarded as equal to £20 a year of socage land.2 We have now, step by step, felt our way from what seemed to be the most reliable facts relating to the population and acreage of England down to this point, viz., that an average manor was about the landed estate assumed as sufficient for the dignity of a knight, and as such, containing in extent what was known as a "knight's fee," and in value what was considered as equal to £20 per annum of socage rent. The extent and population of manors were, of course, various, and often many manors were held by the same person. But still the above statement may be fairly true of a large majority of manors. For where the manors were smallest the country was probably most populous, and the proportion and value of cultivated land the largest; and thus the annual value and population of the manors may have varied much less than their area.

Having now obtained some notion of the extent and annual value of an average manor, I want to establish the point, that neither the lord of the manor nor his tenants were, in the modern commercial sense of the word, absolute owners, but rather fee-farm tenants at money or labour rents, originally representing in value the annual value of the land. The mere fact that they held under feudal tenure almost involves this.

In Saxon times it is said that absolute ownership of land, free of rent and service, was recognised, and that land so owned was known as allodial land. But at the Conquest, if not before the Conquest, feudal tenure had supplanted allodial ownership.

After all the doubts and different views which have been taken as to the origin and meaning of the word "feudal," the practical meaning of it is not very difficult to understand. As opposed to absolute ownership, feudal tenure meant practically a holding of land upon loan or lease. Whatever the doubt may be about the origin and

(1) Statute for respiting of Knighthood. Statutes of the Realm. Record Commission, ed. i. p. 229.

(2) For instance, as regards Aids to make the King's son a Knight, or to marry his daughter, 25 Ed. III. s. 5, c. xi., enacted that they shall be levied "after the form of the statute thereof made, and not in other manner, that is to say, of every [knight's] fee holden of the King without mean 20s. and no more, and of every £20 of land holden of the King without mean in socage 20s. and no more."-(1351—2.)

meaning of the Norman word "feud," there is no doubt at all about the meaning of the Teutonic equivalent for it. If you look up the word in a German dictionary you find the German word for it "das Lehen." And in Mr. Hargrave's edition of Blackstone's "Commentaries" (vol. ii. p. 46), I find reference to an "observation of Sir F. Palgrave, that the word itself (feud) is never used in any Teutonic language, the Anglo-Saxon or German name for a feud being always lan or lehn (a loan), and for the feudal system lehnwesen. Our own word was adopted from the Norman, and was most probably of Latin origin. In Scotland the letting of land for a long term of years, or in perpetuity, subject to a payment of a rent and forfeiture, and therefore upon terms closely resembling those of the original benefices or feuds, is to this day called feuing, and the rent feu-duty."

Let us now look at the terms of the loan in perpetuity to the lord of the manor of the "knight's fee" of land contained in the average manor, and see what was the commercial value of his feu-duty, or rent, compared with the value of the land.

The feu-duty of every knight's fee was military service for forty days in a year, whenever and wherever required, of a knight (or two serving-men instead of him), at his own proper expenses in going, staying for forty days, and returning.1 And what this forty-days' service was worth may be guessed from the amount of the fines at which those who wished were allowed to compound for their personal services on the issue of the summons. In 16 Edward II. the Barons of the Exchequer were commanded to compound with the archbishops, bishops, religious men, and others, for the remission of their service in the next army summoned at Newcastle on the vigil of St. James's next ensuing, and to take for a fine £40 for every fee, and so pro rata. By Pat. 13 Edward II. it was directed that £20 should be taken for a fine on every fee of a knight who should make default. And in 7 Edward II., on the summons of service for the army of Scotland, it was proclaimed that ecclesiastical persons and women should do their service at the day, or come before A and B and pay a fine, viz., twenty marks for every fee. These instances given by Lord Hale are sufficient to show that, originally, this forty-days' service was meant in good earnest to be performed, and that the "feu-duty" was really exacted. They also, by the amount of the fines, confirm the original estimate of the value of the forty-days' service as roughly equal, on an average, to £20 of socage rent, which has been already shown to represent the annual value of the knight's fee of land contained in the average manor.

2

i This forty-days' service was, therefore, the labour-rent for the

(1) Co. Litt., p. 71, Mr. Hargrave's, n. (1.)

(2) Co. Litt., p. 71, Hargrave's, n. (1.)

manor; and forty days, with the addition of the further time spent in going and returning, may be estimated as one-seventh or oneeighth of the three hundred working days in a year.

Now there is a test to which we may put this hypothesis, that knights' service for one-seventh or one-eighth of the year was originally held a fair equivalent for the annual value of a knight's fee.

Mr. Kemble's estimate of the extent of the Saxon hyde was about 30 acres. And he shows that the hyde was the allotment considered as sufficient for a family. And it was upon this assumption that we estimated the minimum number of families in Saxon times from the number of hydes. Now, as I have said, the value of agricultural land was about 4d. an acre. The annual rent for 30 acres would, therefore, be about 10s. At the same period the annual amount of wages of the higher class of workmen-assuming three hundred working days in a year-was about 75s., so that about one-seventh or one-eighth of a good workman's year's labour would be required to pay the rent of a holding of 30 acres.

Now, just as the hyde was the extent of land considered needful to sustain a well-to-do peasant's family, so the knight's fee was the extent considered requisite to sustain the position and dignity of a knight. And if the peasant's labour for one-seventh or one-eighth of the year was the equivalent of the annual value of his hyde, so it was not unnatural that knightly service with horse and arms for one-seventh or one-eighth of the year should be originally considered as equivalent to the annual value of the knight's fee. We may put it thus,-The lord of the manor had to work about as many days per year to pay the labour rent of his holding as the peasant did for his. But the lord's labour was considered as so much more valuable than the peasant's labour, as a knight's fee exceeded in area a peasant's hyde.

It is quite true that there was some uncertainty whether the fortydays' service, or the fines instead of it, would be required each year, and as the peace of the country became more and more established the military service would become lighter and lighter; but if we may take Chaucer's description of the knight and squire of the "Canterbury Tales" as in any way typical of the class of manorial lords, it is obvious that they were thoroughly military men, often away with the king upon his wars, sometimes beyond the seas for much longer periods than forty days in a year. The public calls upon their time and their military habits evidently prevented their being able to devote themselves to the business of agriculture. They did not manage and farm their own demesne lands. They must either let them out to farm, or they must farm them by bailiff. And from Chaucer's description we gather that the bailiff, in his lord's absence, was the master of the manor, like the agent of an

Irish non-resident landlord's estate. While the lord of the manor was, by his military service, paying his rent for the manor, the bailiff had to farm his demesne lands and collect and enforce the rents and services of his tenants. Chaucer's description of the "reve," or "bailiff," was no doubt true to the life

"Well could he keep a garner and a binn,
Well wist he by the drought and by the rain
The yielding of his seed and of his grain,
His Lord 'is sheep, his nete, and his dairy,
His swine, his horse, his store, and his poultry
Were wholly in the Reve 'is governing

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With grene trees yshadowed was his place,

He couthe [could] better than his lord purchase,
Full rich he was astorid prively

His lord he could well plesin subtilly

To give and lenin him of his own good."

The bailiff, we gather from this, knew better sometimes how to feather his own nest than his master's. And Chaucer attributes to him that same clever overreaching hardness in his dealings with his lord's tenants which has characterised too often his Irish successor―

"There could no man bring him in arrerage,
They were adradd of him as of the deth."

And this hardness comes out again in "The Frere's Tale," where the "Sompnour" shams the bailiff, and declares himself to be "ridin for to raisin up a rent."

I conclude, then, that the lord of the manor was not an absolute owner of the manor in the modern commercial sense, but rather the "fee-farmer" of it. And this applies equally to his demesne lands, which he farmed on his own account by bailiff, and to the foreign portion of the manor, which was in the tenure of sub-tenants, underrents, and services due to him, and of which he was, therefore, a sort of middle-man. For the whole manor, we have seen, he paid in fact a labour rent originally equal to the annual value of the land.

We pass now to the freeholders, who from the same "Extenta Manerii" we learn were " forinseci vel extrinseci," i.e., holding parts, not of the demesne lands, but of what was called the foreign part of the manor. Some of them, we learn from the same document, held by knight's service—and were represented probably by the 10,097 Liberi Homines of the Domesday Survey; others by socage tenure, probably the 23,072 Sochemanni of the Domesday Survey.

These freeholders were tenants in fee-simple, or rather what in Ireland are known as "" "fee-farm tenants. They had a freehold interest in their land. They held it by free services, such as gentlemen might give, and they were above the servile services of

villein tenure. Chaucer's host knew perfectly well how to get at the right side of the freeholder

"Sir Frankleine commeth nere, if your will be,

Saye us a tale, as y'are a gentilman.”

The freeholder in the fourteenth century felt doubtless towards the ploughman and the cottager as a mean white felt towards the negro in the Southern States. He was a "gentleman," to be classed, not with the sons of toil, but with the knight and squire. He was the squire's yeoman, or serving-man, and followed him alike in the battle-field and the chase. He shared his work as he shared his sports, and, if holding by knight's service, paid his rent by so many days of personal service, just like his lord. Only there was this difference. The freeholder's service was not reckoned so valuable as the knight's. Forty days' service only went with him for half a knight's fee instead of a whole one. Two serving-men instead of one knight must give forty days' service for every knight's fee for which they served. This, at least, was the theory of it. In practice some of them served, others paid money scutages instead of service. They held only fractions of a knight's fee, and had, therefore, so to speak, to club together to pay the rent. But rents in some shape or other they did pay, and when converted into rents of assize, they formed a considerable item in the income of the lord,1 being, as Mr. Rogers shows, roughly equal to the annual value of the land.

Now we pass the line of " gentil" blood, and come to the customary tenants and cottagers with "servile" services.

Lord Littleton gives the following definition of the customary or villein tenant :

"Tenure in villenage is most properly when a villeine holdeth of his lord ... certain lands and tenements according to the custom of the manor or otherwise, at the will of the lord and to do to his lord villeine service, as to carry and recarry the dung of his lord . . . and to spread the same upon the land of his lord and such like." (Litt., s. 172.)

This cap fits the head of Chaucer's ploughman exactly :

"With him there was a ploughman, his brother
That had lad of dong many a fother [load],

And a true swinker [worker], and a good was he,
Living in peace and perfect charity.

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And he would thresh, and thereto dike and delve
For Christ 'is sake, for every poor wight

Withouten hire, if it lay in his might."

That Chaucer's ploughman was a small landholder is shown also

by his paying tythes—

"Both of his proper swink and his cattell,"

and his being able to "ride upon a mare.” He was evidently a

(1) Rogers, p. 12.