Chapter XXVII: The Villages, Manors, Parishes, and Parks

We have seen that in Norman times the whole country was, so to speak, the king's. There were the great lords who held "fiefs" or possessions directly from the king, which consisted of manors in various parts of the country--sometimes a number of manors pretty close together, but often with big stretches of unoccupied land between them over which the king had full control. Out of these unused districts the king could, and often did make new grants of land.

As years rolled on, the manors became more valuable, and new manors were formed. In the earlier days the manor and the parish meant much the same thing; but in course of time, though the boundaries of the parish did not alter much, the number of manors increased in some parishes from one to two or three, or even more.

In many cases the mode of life on these manors went on unchanged for centuries, the tenants of these different manors going to the original parish church and the parish priest ministering to the people in all the manors in his parish. In other cases daughter churches, or chapels of ease, were built in the newer manors, and provision was made for the support of a priest to minister to them. These have in some instances been erected in the course of time into separate parishes; but many remained as parts of the mother parish, though they might be several miles away from the parish church.

All through the Norman times there was a tendency to make new manors, and this gave rise to so many difficulties that the practice was stopped in the time of King Edward I.

In all parts of England to-day we have parks belonging to big mansions; and our big towns and cities have their parks too; but these are usually recreation-grounds for the people, and most of them are quite modern, with bandstands and sports' grounds, clumps of shrubs, flower-beds, and stretches of greensward. A park in Norman and in Early English times was very different in appearance from our parks, whether in town or country. Just as the king had his great forests for hunting wild beasts, so in the later Norman times the great lords were anxious to enclose pieces of waste and forest land for the same purpose.

As we have seen, there were in early times vast tracts of wild, uncultivated, unenclosed land, partly wooded and partly heath land, between the manors, which belonged to the king. The king alone could give leave to make a park. In the reign of King Henry III especially we find many such parks were "empaled". Of course the nobles had to give something to the king for this privilege.

Many of the old parks in England, now celebrated for their fine timber and beautiful scenery, date back to this period; but they were at first much wilder, and the trees then were neither so many nor so fine as they are now. The deer remaining in some of them to-day just serve to remind us of the "wild beasts" with which they were stocked.

The laws for preserving the wild beasts and the game in these parks and forests and chases were very strict, harsh, and severe. Many of these new parks took away from the villeins, who lived in the neighbourhood, certain rights and privileges which their forefathers had had "time out of mind".

Though the land could not be bought and sold outright, manors became divided and subdivided, let and underlet, for various terms of years, and in many curious ways, so that in time the profits, or the income, of a manor, instead of going straight to the lord of the manor, might be going to half a dozen different persons and places. For instance, the half of a manor might be divided amongst several people for, say, twenty years, or for the lives of three or four people; but at the end of the twenty years, or on the death of the last of those persons, it must go back to the lord of the manor, who could keep it in his hands or let it out in other ways to quite a different set of people.

_Built by Robert Burnell, Bishop of Bath, and Chancellor to
Edward I at Acton Burnell, Shropshire._]

It is not very difficult to understand that the management of an estate of many manors, broken up into many small portions, became very complicated. Records of all these various transactions had to be made in writing: and carefully kept, and copied and re-copied time after time. People who understood all the "ins and outs" of the laws relating to the possession of land became very important and very busy.

There are immense numbers of documents, some of them dating back to Norman and even earlier times, still in existence. The Record Office, in London, has many thousands of documents connected with the king's business; the borough towns and cities and the monasteries each had their own records, but most of these latter records disappeared in the sixteenth century; every old estate has such documents; and many of the old manors have still records going back many centuries. Of course thousands more of these old documents have been lost, some destroyed purposely, and others through carelessness and ignorance. Some have been burnt in times of danger, when their owner, knowing that there were documents amongst them which might get him into trouble and cost him his head, set fire to bundles of papers and parchments. Others have been stored away in dark, damp cellars and forgotten for years and years, and rats and mice have nibbled them away, or mildew and damp have caused them to rot.

Those that we have left can still be read, and it is surprising to find in many cases how well they have been preserved all through the centuries. The letters are very often beautifully formed, and the whole clear and distinct. They were written in Norman French and Latin, the latter being the language in which law business was carried on for many centuries.[13]

[13] Notice a fine specimen, written before the Conquest, given
on p. 103, and the illustration facing p. 88.