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Importance Of The Manor In Medieval Times

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The Roles of Lords, Vassals, and Peasants

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Medieval England is often characterised in books or film as one of extremes, where serfs toil the land while lords greedily profit from their labour. But examination of the records of manor courts has revealed a much more nuanced relationship between local rulers and those living on their land.

Land, village life and petty crime: the workings of the medieval legal system

Manor court records are a good mirror into the realities of life in rural England, believes Dr Spike Gibbs. He has been examining the manor court system in England from the 1300s to the 17th century. Found in many villages across the country, these small and very local institutions of government oversaw day-to-day issues such as ensuring access to resources, dealing with petty criminality such as assaults, and overseeing land transfers.

"These are all important issues to small village communities," says Dr Gibbs. "But these manor courts also imposed the power of feudal lords in society. If you were a servile person you had to pay if you got married by working on your lord's land for example. And so, previous Marxist theory has been that the system was primarily a tool to enable lords to impose their will on tenants, often in an exploitative way."

Instead of this conflict model between lords and tenants, I found that people were quite happy to collaborate with their lords.

It is this relationship that has been blamed for the crisis in the economy before the Black Death, although Dr Gibbs argues this link is not born out in the records. He explains: "One popular theory has been that the lords and tenants of medieval and early modern English villages were really at each other's throats - or as much as a tenant could be at a lord's throat given the power imbalance. So lords were powerful and tenants servile, and peasants were therefore often forced to carry out work for the owners of their land.

"Some even thought that lords, by being so extractive, caused the system to collapse by demanding more and more from their tenants, who couldn't even produce enough to support their families and resow the crops, and that this eventually this caused an economic crisis. But actually, the evidence is showing that the system was a lot more collaborative than that."

How fair was life in medieval England? Was this time beset by power struggles, corruption and lawlessness? If not, how did a system of order prevail?

Where does the power lie?

Although today's court system bears no resemblance to that of medieval times, the system remained a powerful force in rural England for centuries, partially because of their connections to the everyday lives of those they oversaw. "Manor courts remained important from the 1300s to the 17th century, and that's partly because they were very flexible" Dr Gibbs explains. "They could be used by local communities to fulfil a large array of functions and as a result, the people considered them useful. So they saw value in the courts as a community rather than something that was simply imposed on them by their feudal lords.

"Instead of this conflict model between lords and tenants that has been argued in the past, with tenants trying to get out of doing what the lord wants them to do, I found that actually these people were quite happy to collaborate with their lords."

While Dr Gibbs is keen to stress that this was by no means an easy life for tenants, his research has found that the lords were savvy enough to understand that a collaborative relationship could benefit them both.

"On a day-to-day basis," he says, "the lords were aware that they wanted productive tenants, and that they would benefit from tenants who could pay their rents and who were economically viable. Healthy villages helped them to maintain their power. I think particularly they were willing to collaborate with their elite tenants a lot to make the system work."

If your horse got free it could do a lot of damage in quite a short amount of time, which could be pretty devastating.

Lost animals and a land with no fences

One illustration of the ways that lords and tenants were able to work with the court system to mutual benefit is in the handling of stray animals, a problem at the time as fields were open with no fences. "If your horse got free it could do a lot of damage in quite a short amount of time, which could be pretty devastating," Dr Gibbs says.

To help manage this problem, the courts developed a system that provided potential benefit to both the lords and the peasants on their land. Anyone who found a stray animal was required to report it to the lord's court. The lord would look after that animal for a year and a day, and if the owner had not collected it during that period, it would be claimed by the lord. In reality, however, they would often sell it to the person who found the animal a year earlier.

"This gave the owner time to track down their animal, but it also gave an incentive for people to hand stray animals in. The lord could gain if the animal was not reclaimed in the time period" says Dr Gibbs.

While it might appear that the lords could easily profit from such a system, Dr Gibbs, in collaboration with his colleague Dr Jordan Claridge, argues that this is not necessarily the case. "What we've shown is that it looks like the amount of money that was needed for the costs of keeping the animal for a year and a day actually outstripped its value," he says. "So the lords are actually maintaining this hugely important system. Giving people the time to collect their property would have been hugely valuable to the farmers who had lost animals. It also protected farmland. By taking the animal in, the lord has stopped it from wandering around and potentially destroying more fields and crops."

The evolution of systems such as this, where benefit was created for the wider community and not simply those with power, is one indication that the court system was not simply an instrument for control as previously believed, argues Dr Gibbs. "Tenants could see value in these institutions, and that means that their relationship with the lord is as much collaborative as it is conflict based."

This film can also be viewed on LSE Player.
Dr Spike Gibbs was speaking to Jess Winterstein, Deputy Head of Media Relations at LSE.

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What medieval courts reveal about rural life I Research for the World | LSE Research

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The narrative of the powerful elites lording it over powerless workers has endured for centuries, but research into the manor court system of the medieval and early modern period in England supports new interpretations. The relationship between lords and their tenants may not be as exploitative as previously believed, argues Spike Gibbs.

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Elizabeth A.R. Brown Emerita Professor of History, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

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Feudalism | Definition, Examples, History, & Facts

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feudalism, also called feudal system or feudality, French féodalité, historiographic construct designating the social, economic, and political conditions in western Europe during the early Middle Ages, the long stretch of time between the 5th and 12th centuries. Feudalism and the related term feuda…

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Learning Objective

Illustrate the hierarchy of the manor system by describing the roles of lords, villeins, and serfs

Key Points

The lord of a manor was supported by his land holdings and contributions from the peasant population. Serfs who occupied land belonging to the lord were required to work the land, and in return received certain entitlements.

Serfdom was the status of peasants in the manor system, and villeins were the most common type of serf in the Middle Ages.

Villeins rented small homes with or without land; as part of their contract with the lord they were expected to spend some time working the land.

Villeins could not move away without the lord's consent and the acceptance of the new lord whose manor they were to move to. Because of the protection villeins received from the lord's manor, it was generally not favorable to move away unless the landlord proved to be especially tyrannical.

The manor system was made up of three types of land: demesne, dependent, and free peasant land.

Manorial structures could be found throughout medieval Western and Eastern Europe: in Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Baltic nations, Holland, Prussia, England, France, and the Germanic kingdoms.

Terms

demesne

All the land, not necessarily all physically connected to the manor house, that was retained by the lord of a manor for his own use and support, under his own management.

serfs

Peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism. It was a condition of bondage that developed primarily during the High Middle Ages in Europe.

villein

The most common type of serf in the Middle Ages. They had more rights and a higher status than the lowest serf, but existed under a number of legal restrictions that differentiated them from freemen.

freemen

Men who were not serfs in the feudal system.

Manorialism was an essential element of feudal society and was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire. Manorialism was widely practiced in medieval Western Europe and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market economy and new forms of agrarian contract.

Manorialism was characterized by the vesting of legal and economic power in the lord of a manor. The lord was supported economically from his own direct landholding in a manor (sometimes called a fief), and from the obligatory contributions of the peasant population who fell under the jurisdiction of the lord and his court. These obligations could be payable in several ways: in labor, in kind, or, on rare occasions, in coin. Manorial structures could be found throughout medieval Western and Eastern Europe: in Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Baltic nations, Holland, Prussia, England, France, and the Germanic kingdoms.

The main reason for the development of the system was perhaps also its greatest strength: the stabilization of society during the destruction of Roman imperial order. 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, councilors were forbidden to resign, and coloni, the cultivators of land, were not to move from the land they were attached to. The workers of the land were on their way to becoming serfs. As the Germanic kingdoms succeeded Roman authority in the West in the 5th century, Roman landlords were often simply replaced by Gothic or Germanic ones, with little change to the underlying situation or displacement of populations. Thus the system of manorialism became ingrained into medieval societies.

Manors each consisted of 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 labor services or a part of its output; 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.

Serfdom was the status of peasants under feudalism, specifically relating to manorialism. It was a condition of bondage that developed primarily during the Middle Ages in Europe.

Serfs who occupied a plot of land were required to work for the lord of the manor who owned that land, and in return were entitled to protection, justice, and the right to exploit certain fields within the manor to maintain their own subsistence. Serfs were often required to work on not only the lord's fields, but also his mines, forests, and roads. The manor formed the basic unit of feudal society, and the lord of a manor and his serfs were bound legally, economically, and socially. Serfs formed the lowest class of feudal society.

Many of the negative components of manorialism, and feudalism in general, revolve around the bondage of the serf, his lack of social mobility, and his low position on the social hierarchy. However, a serf had some freedoms within his constraints. Though the common wisdom is that a serf owned "only his belly"-even his clothes were the property, in law, of his lord-he might still accumulate personal property and wealth, and some serfs became wealthier than their free neighbors, although this happened rarely. A well-to-do serf might even be able to buy his freedom. A serf could grow what crops he saw fit on his lands, although a serf's taxes often had to be paid in wheat. The surplus crops he would sell at market.

The landlord could not dispossess his serfs without legal cause, was supposed to protect them from the depredations of robbers or other lords, and was expected to support them by charity in times of famine. Many such rights were enforceable by the serf in the manorial court.

A villein (or villain) was the most common type of serf in the Middle Ages. Villeins had more rights and a higher status than the lowest serf, but existed under a number of legal restrictions that differentiated them from freemen. Villeins generally rented small homes with or without land. As part of the contract with the landlord, the lord of the manor, they were expected to spend some of their time working on the lord's fields. Contrary to popular belief, the requirement was not often greatly onerous, and was often only seasonal, as was the duty to help at harvest-time, for example. The rest of villeins' time was spent farming their own land for their own profit.

Like other types of serfs, villeins were required to provide other services, possibly in addition to paying rent of money or produce. Villeins were tied to the land and could not move away without their lord's consent and the acceptance of the lord to whose manor they proposed to migrate to. Villeins were generally able to hold their own property, unlike slaves.

Villeinage was not a purely uni-directional exploitative relationship. In the Middle Ages, land within a lord's manor provided sustenance and survival, and being a villein guaranteed access to land and kept crops secure from theft by marauding robbers. Landlords, even where legally entitled to do so, rarely evicted villeins, because of the value of their labour. Villeinage was preferable to being a vagabond, a slave, or an un-landed laborer.

In many medieval countries, a villein could gain freedom by escaping from a manor to a city or borough and living there for more than a year, but this action involved the loss of land rights and agricultural livelihood, a prohibitive price unless the landlord was especially tyrannical or conditions in the village were unusually difficult.

Sources

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Illustrate the hierarchy of the manor system by describing the roles of lords, villeins, and serfs The lord of a manor was supported by his land holdings and contributions from the peasant population. Serfs who occupied land belonging to the lord were required to work the land, and in return received certain entitlements.