4a THE MANOR
already know) extremely rare".1 As a result of this it was
possible for two men to be living in the same village, and each
"holding the same amount of land; but, because they served dif-
ferent lords, they might find themselves very unevenly burdened
with services and rents. Yet, heavy or light, they both led the
same type of life; and therefore, in seeking to understand the
medieval peasant, we need not place undue emphasis on these
differences so long as we remember their existence, and are
ready to consider what effects they finally encouraged.2
Our enquiry, then, will be mainly concerned with the effects
of the manorial organisation roughly between the years 1200 and
^50—a period which saw it at the height of its powers and yet
also certainly declining towards its fall. Only the conditions of
peasant life as determined by the manorial system will be dis-
cussed here, and many problems connected with the rise of the
manor and its relation to the vill will be left untouched.3 In so
doing we shall, no doubt, assume a uniformity of organisation and
conditions that more detailed investigations of limited areas will
challenge or even deny.4 " To ask for a definition of the manor ",
said Professor Maitland, "is to ask for the impossible", and
more recent workers have given us reason to believe that con-
siderable parts of England were never manorialised at all. Yet,
even so, one of the most brilliant of recent disintegrators of the
manorial system admits that, " although it i$ true that we can no
longer regard the large estate with villeins and labour service as
the c constituting cell' of English society in the thirteenth cen-
tury, such estates do, nevertheless, form an important section of
economic life."5 Again, we may take encouragement from the
words of Professor Ashley when he writes:
The manorial system is no doubt often conceived of as more
1 Econ. Hist. Rev., vol. v, No. 2, p. 30. Cf. Year Book, 3/4 Kd. II, 15;
F. G. Davenport, op. cit. 7.
2 See chapter xi, where the question of the part played by unequal services
in the desire for freedom is discussed.
3 The standard books on this subject are still Vinogradoff s well-known
monographs: The Growth of the Manor; Villainage in England; and English
Society in the Xlth Century. With these go Seebohm's masterpiece, The
English Village Community and Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond.
4 See, for example, the excellent studies of F. M. Stenton on the Danelegh;
those of D. C. Douglas on Medieval East Anglia and those of J. E. A, Jolliflc
(E.H.R. 1926) on Northumbrian conditions.
5 Econ. Hist. Rev., vol. v, No. 2, p. 44.