The Lands of the Lord
| Author | Christopher Jessel |
| Pages | 85-109 |
Chapter 6
The Lands of the Lord
6.1 DEMESNE AND OTHER LAND
Everything in the manor that could not be claimed by someone else belonged to the lord. The lands of the lord are classified as demesne and waste. That is something of an oversimplification. The old legal theory, which is, for most of the country, historically incorrect but which underlies much of the law, saw the lord as starting with an empty landscape which he then parcelled out.
The demesne was the land which was either retained in hand or leased. In champion country such land could comprise both strips and closes. The lord’s strips in the open fields were indistinguishable from those of freeholders and copyholders, save that the lord had more of them and tended to have better land. Because he had more strips it was easier to consolidate and inclose. Elsewhere the lord had closes that had never been open fields, both arable and grazing. The demesne included buildings, namely the manor house itself, the home farm and its outbuildings, and houses and cottages in the settlement which were leased out or occupied by members of the lord’s household. The demesne might include the mill, the bakery, the inn and other buildings used by the village, although they could be copyhold.
1 See Henly v The Mayor and Burgesses of Lyme (1828) 5 Bing N C 91 at 110, 130 ER 995, per
Best CJ.
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The demesne could include a deer park or chase. Only a few manors had them, but there were thousands around the country, comprising up to 4600 acres,
In the modern law since 1600 demesne has excluded villeinage or copyhold land, but that was not always so. Bracton
A person who is lord of a manor may often own other land in the vicinity, which may once have been common freehold of the manor or copyhold, or may never have been parcel of the manor but has passed with it for many years. In order to have the status of demesne the land must have been united with the manor at all times since 1290 or have accrued by act of law or possibly by statute. This is considered further in 7.4. As a result it can now be difficult to establish whether a particular piece of land is demesne. This is relevant to sales of manors. Formerly, it was clear law that a conveyance of a manor automatically included
2 Fletcher, J, Gardens of Earthly Delight: The History of Deer Parks (Windgather Press, 2011) 2,
163.
3 Bracton, Sir Henry, De legibus et consuetudinibus angliae (c 1257) f 263.
4 Coke, Sir Henry, Complete Copyholder (E Flsher et al, 1630) ss 12–14.
5 Bracton op cit f 263.
6 Ibid f 264b.
any demesne land. In recent years many auction particulars and hence conveyances of manors have purported to exclude demesne land but either expressly or by implication they have incorporated the Law of Property Act 1925, s 62(3), which includes hereditaments reputed to appertain to the manor. Issues have therefore arisen as to whether land reputed to be parcel of the manor and therefore apparently covered has been included in a sale. This is considered further in 26.4.
6.2 MANAGEMENT AND LEASES
The demesne could be managed in one of two ways: in hand or by leasing. The farmland in the demesne was exploited for production on behalf of the lord, on which he grew crops to be consumed by his household or sold to provide an income. The tenants of the manor, both free and bond, performed services on that land as well as cultivating their own plots both for subsistence and, increasingly as time passed, to raise cash crops to sell for money to pay rents.
Patterns of running the demesne varied over the centuries. Sometimes it paid the lord to keep the land in hand, especially when grain prices were high, and to rely on services from the tenants to cultivate the land. However, as time went on this dual cultivation system became inefficient. Tenants were able to produce surpluses on their own lands, especially if they were freed from the need to work on the demesne, and could commute their services for quitrents. If the lord preferred to run the demesne in hand he did better to hire his own labourers but, particularly after the mid-fourteenth century, he more often entered into a commercial agreement with a cultivator under which he let the demesne or part of it for a money rent for a period of time. There was more certainty in an annual rent from the farmer, who had to pay in good times and bad, so that the lord did not have the expense of equipping the holding and running a business.
Such an arrangement is found in Anglo-Saxon times (as loanland) and under the Normans when it was called a farm, either from the Anglo-Saxon feorm meaning food or from the Latin firma meaning for a firm or fixed period. The period was also called a term, because it had a terminus or end date, and the cultivator was called a farmer (hence the modern word) or termor. This type of management became more usual as time passed. By 1900 nearly 90 per cent of agricultural land in England was in lease. Since then it has reduced as a result of the break-up of the great estates, the security given to farmers by the Agriculture Act 1947, the pattern of taxation and the effects of subsidies from the United Kingdom and under the Common Agricultural Policy. In modern law if the arrangement runs for more than three years it is called a lease and the occupier a
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lessee:
Leases could be for any length. Some were for 99 years, some for 1000 years and many such granted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are still running, with rents payable at the manor court (see 14.6). Leases could be for the lifetime of the lessee or for three lives, such as the lessee, his wife and son. These leases were for certain purposes, such as the Parliamentary franchise, reckoned as freeholds so that the lessee for life whose holding was worth more than 40 shillings a year had a vote before 1832. Leases for lives were of the in-between types of tenure that were converted in 1925 by s 149 of the Law of Property Act to leases for 90 years determinable on death.
Other leases were granted on an annual basis from one Ladyday (25 March) to the next or from one Michaelmas (29 September) to the next; in many parts of the country the dates are 6 April or 10 October because of the lost 11 days when this country converted from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Such annual leases run on until either side determines them by notice to quit, and those which were granted under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986 are protected so that the landlord cannot evict the lessee during his lifetime (or in some cases his son and grandson), except on limited grounds.
Sometimes the manor was leased as a whole together with the services and other rights as a single unit including the right to hold the manor court. This was called putting the manor to farm. The freeholder was called the lord reversioner and the lessee, who stood in the place of the lord, was known as the lord farmer. Lords farmer were...
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