Several reasons may be thought of to explain the fact that free tenements are thus grouped along with the villain holdings and worked into that single unit, the manor. It may be urged that the division into manors is not merely and perhaps not chiefly an economic one, but that it reflects a certain political organisation, which had to deal with and to class free tenants as well as servile people. It may be conjectured that even from the economic point of view, although the case of free tenants would hardly have called the manorial unit into existence, it was convenient to use that class when once created for the grouping of villain land and work: why should the free tenants not join the divisions formed for another purpose but locally within easy reach and therefore conveniently situated for such intercourse with the lord as was rendered necessary by the character of the tenement? Again, the grouping of free tenants may have originated in a time when the connexion with the whole was felt more strongly than in the feudal period; it may possibly go back to a community which had nothing or little to do with subjection, and in which the free landowners joined for mutual support and organisation. It is not impossible to assume, on the other hand, that in many cases the free tenant was left in the manorial group because he had begun by being an unfree and therefore a necessary member of it. All such suppositions seem prima facie admissible and reasonable enough, and at the same time it is clear, that by deciding in favour of one of them or by the relative importance assigned to each we shall very materially influence the solution of interesting historical problems, in order to appreciate rightly the position of the free tenements in the manor we have to examine whether these tenements are all of one and the same kind or not, and this must be done not from the legal standpoint whence it has already been reviewed, but in connexion with the practical management of the estate. I think that a survey of the different meanings which the term bears in our documents must lead us to recognise three chief distinctions: first there is free land which once formed part of the demesne but has been separated from it; then there is the land held by villagers outside the regular arrangements of the rural community, and lastly there are ancient free holdings of the same shape as the servile tenements, though differing from the latter in legal character. Each class will naturally fall into subdivisions.(37*)Under the first head it is to be observed that domanial land very often lost its direct connexion with the lord's household, and was given away to dependent people on certain conditions. One of the questions addressed to the juries by the Glastonbury inquest of 1189 was prompted by this practice: it was asked what demesne land had been given out under free agreement or servile conditions, and whether it was advantageous to keep to the arrangement or not. One of the reasons which lay at the root of the process has been already touched upon. Grants of domanial land occur commonly in return for services rendered in the administration of the manor: reeves, ploughmen, herdsmen, woodwards are sometimes recompensed in this manner instead of being liberated from the duties incumbent on their holding. Asmall rent was usually affixed to the plot severed from the demesne, and the whole arrangement may be regarded as very like an ordinary lease. An attenuated form of the same thing may be noticed when some officer or servant was permitted to use certain plots of domanial land during the tenure of his office. It happened, for instance, that a cotter was entrusted to take care of a team of oxen belonging to the lord or obliged to drive his plough. He might be repaid either by leave to use the manorial plough on his own land on specified occasions, or else by an assignment to him of the crop on certain acres of the home farm.(38*) Such privileges are sometimes granted to villagers who do not seem to be personally employed in the manorial administration, but such cases are rare, and must be due to special reasons which escape our notice.
It is quite common, on the other hand, to find deficiencies in the normal holdings made up from the demesne, e.g. a group of peasants hold five acres apiece in the fields, and one of the set cannot receive his full share: the failing acres are supplied by the demesne. Even an entire virgate or half-virgate may be formed in this way.(39*) Sometimes a plot of the lord's land is given to compensate the bad quality of the peasant's land.(40*) Of course, such surrenders of the demesne soil were by no means prompted by disinterested philanthropy. They were made to enable the peasantry to bear its burdens, and may-be to get rid of patches of bad soil or ground that was inconveniently situated.(41*) In a number of cases these grants of demesne are actual leases, and probably the result of hard bargains.
