THE MANORIAL SYSTEM 73
generalisations, or to attempt to give any full-scale picture of
what was happening to the peasant during that time. From the
thirteenth century onwards, however, things are clearer. The
Norman attempt to impose a feudal organisation has spent its
force, and the manorial system is seen in its full flower. While
we may no longer believe that the whole of England was
manorialised almost completely—indeed we now know that
some parts were never manorialised at all— yet the most recent
studies, such as those of Professor Kosminsky, show that when
all allowances are made, the manorial system had a very firm hold
on large areas, especially in Central England.1 It still remains
true, therefore, that hundreds of thousands of men in twelfth-
and thirteenth-century England were born to live and die in
villages which were under the control of this or that lord, and
that these men knew no other life than that conditioned by the
enclosing web of the feudal manor.
Yet, while our main concern will be to follow the lives and
fortunes of these manorial peasants, we shall in effect be de-
scribing the lives of many others as well. The serf had much in
common with his free, or half-free brother. Both were engaged in
agriculture and in the pastoral life, and both were subject to the
routine such pursuits necessitate. Much of the time of both was
spent in the fields and about their closes. Although we shall see
howmany things there were which separated them, we must never
lose sight of the fact that, free or serf, they were engaged on
similar tasks.
1 Econ. Hist. Rev, vol. v, No. a, p. 44: "Although it is true that we can no
longer regard the large estate with villeins and labour services as the * con-
stituting cell* of English society in the thirteenth century, such estates do,
nevertheless, form an important section of economic life.**