as detached from the land of
the villagers, enclosed and separately cultivated or pastured; but for
the most part it lay scattered through the same open fields and was
cultivated by the same methods and according to the same rotation as
the land of the small tenants of the vill, though it was kept under
separate management.

*10. Classes of People on the Manor.*--Every manor was in the hands of a
lord. He might be a knight, esquire, or mere freeman, but in the great
majority of cases the lord of the manor was a nobleman, a bishop,
abbot, or other ecclesiastical official, or the king. But whether the
manor was the whole estate of a man of the lesser gentry, or merely
one part of the possessions of a great baron, an ecclesiastical
corporation, or the crown, the relation between its possessor as lord
of the manor and the other inhabitants as his tenants was the same. In
the former case he was usually resident upon the manor; in the latter
the individual or corporate lord was represented by a steward or other
official who made occasional visits, and frequently, on large manors,
by a resident bailiff. There was also almost universally a reeve, who
was chosen from among the tenants and who had to carry on the demesne
farm in the interests of the lord.

[Illustration: Seal, with Representation of a Manor House. (Turner,
_Domestic Architecture in England_.)]

The tenants of the manor, ranging from holders of considerable amounts
of land, perhaps as much as a hundred acres, through various
gradations down to mere cotters, who held no more than a cottage with
perhaps a half-acre or a rood of land, or even with no land at all,
are usually grouped in the "extents" or contemporary descriptions of
the manors and their inhabitants into several distinct classes. Some
are described as free tenants, or tenants holding freely. Others, and
usually the largest class, are called villains, or customary tenants.
Some, holding only a half or a quarter virgate, are spoken of as half
or quarter villains. Again, a numerous class are described by some
name indicating that they hold only a dwelling-house, or at least that
their holding of land is but slight. These are generally spoken of as
cotters.

All these tenants hold land from the lord of the manor and make
payments and perform services in return for their land. The free
tenants most commonly make payments in money only. At special periods
in the year they give a certain number of shill