l was generally a parish also,
the village contained the parish priest, who, though he might usually
hold some acres in the open fields, and might belong to the peasant
class, was of course somewhat set apart from the villagers by his
education and his ordination. The mill was a valued possession of the
lord of the manor, for by an almost universal custom the tenants were
bound to have their grain ground there, and this monopoly enabled the
miller to pay a substantial rent to the lord while keeping enough
profit for himself to become proverbially well-to-do.

There was often a blacksmith, whom we find sometimes exempted from
other services on condition of keeping the demesne ploughs and other
iron implements in order. A chance weaver or other craftsman is
sometimes found, and when the vill was near sea or river or forest
some who made their living by industries dependent on the locality. In
the main, however, the whole life of the vill gathered around the
arable, meadow, and pasture land, and the social position of the
tenants, except for the cross division of serfdom, depended upon the
respective amounts of land which they held.

*11. The Manor Courts.*--The manor was the sphere of operations of a
manor court. On every manor the tenants gathered at frequent periods
for a great amount of petty judicial and regulative work. The most
usual period for the meeting of the manor court was once every three
weeks, though in some manors no trace of a meeting is found more
frequently than three times, or even twice, a year. In these cases,
however, it is quite probable that less formal meetings occurred of
which no regular record was kept. Different kinds of gatherings of the
tenants are usually distinguished according to the authority under
which they were held, or the class of tenants of which they were made
up. If the court was held by the lord simply because of his feudal
rights as a landholder, and was busied only with matters of the
inheritance, transfer, or grant of lands, the fining of tenants for
the breach of manorial custom, or failure to perform their duties to
the lord of the manor, the election of tenants to petty offices on the
manor, and such matters, it was described in legal language as a court
baron. If a court so occupied was made up of villain tenants only, it
was called a customary court. If, on the other hand, the court also
punished general offences, petty crimes, breaches of contract,
breaches of the