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Manorialism or Seigneurialism describes the organisation of rural economy and society in medieval western and parts of central Europe, characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a lord supported economically from his own direct landholding and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the peasant population under his jurisdiction. These obligations could be payable in labour (the French term corvée is conventionally applied), produce ("in kind") or rarely money.

The word derives from the inherited traditional divisions of the countryside reassigned as local jurisdictions known as manors or seigneuries, each subject to a lord (French seigneur), usually holding his position in return for undertakings offered to a higher lord (see Feudalism). The lord held a manor court governed by public law and local custom. Not all territorial seigneurs were secular: bishops and abbots held lands that entailed similar obligations.

The conditions of land tenure underlie all social or economic factors in an agrarian society. Two legal systems of pre-manorial landholding obtained. One, much the more common, was the system of holding land " allodially" in full outright ownership. The other was a use of precaria or benefices in which land was held conditionally, (giving us our word "precarious"). To these two systems the Carolingian monarchs added a third, the aprisio, which linked manorialism with feudalism. The aprisio made its first appearance in Charlemagne's province of Septimania in the south of France, when Charlemagne had to settle the Visigothic refugees who had fled with his retreating forces after the failure of his Saragossa expedition of 778. He solved this problem by allotting "desert" tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the royal fiscThis entry does not concern FISC, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court nor the Frankfort International Ski Club nor the Norfolk, Virginia Fleet and Industrial Supply Center. Under the Merovingians and Carolingians, the fisc (whence we derive "fisca under direct control of the emperor. These holdings aprisio entailed specific conditions. The earliest specific aprisio grant that has been identified was at Fontjoncouse , near NarbonneNarbonne (Narbona in Occitan) (population 50,000) is a city of southwestern France, in the Aude departement of which it is a sous-prefecture''. It is located next to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and by the Aude River. History Modern-day Narbonne was (see Lewis, links).

In certain areas of the former Empire of the West, a system of villas was entrenched in Late Antiquity and was inherited by the medieval world.

1 Common features

Manors each consisted of up to three classes of land:

1. Demesne, the part controlled immediately by the lord and exploited directly for the benefit of his household and dependents;
2. Dependent (serf or villein) holdings carrying the obligation that the peasant household supply the lord with specified labour services or a part of its output (or cash in lieu thereof), subject to the custom attached to the holding; and
3. Free peasant land, without such obligation but otherwise subject to manorial jurisdiction and custom, and owing money rent fixed at the time of the lease.

Additional sources of income from the lord included charges for use of his mill, bakery or wine-press, or for the right to hunt or to let pigs feed in his woodland, as well as court revenues and single payments on each change of tenant. On the other side of the account, manorial administration involved significant expenses, perhaps a reason why smaller manors tended to rely less on villein tenure.

Villein holdings were held nominally by arrangement of lord and tenant, but tenure became in practice almost universally hereditary, with a payment being made to the lord on the succession of another member of the family. Villein land could not be abandoned, at least until demographic and economic circumstances made flight a viable proposition; nor could they be passed to a third party without the lord's permission, and the customary payment.

Though not free, villeins were by no means in the same position as slaves: they enjoyed legal rights, subject to local custom, and had recourse to the law, subject to court charges which were an additional source of manorial income. Sub-letting of villein holdings was not uncommon, and labour on the demesne might be commuted into an additional money payment, as happened increasingly from the 13th century12th century 13th century 14th century other centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 13th century was that century which lasted from 1201 to 1300. Events Fourth through eighth crusades of western European kingdoms against Islam Fall of.

This description of a manor house at ChingfordChingford is a place in London, England in the London Borough of Waltham Forest. It was traditionally part of Essex. Chingford, Highams Park and Woodford Green are represented in Parliament by Conservative Iain Duncan Smith, who led the Conservative Party, Essex in England was recorded in a document for the Chapter of St Paul's CathedralAlternative meanings: St Paul's Cathedral (Macau), St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne St Paul's Cathedral is a cathedral on Ludgate Hill, in the City of London in London, and the seat of the Bishop of London. The present building dates from the 17th century, when it was granted to Robert Le Moyne in 1265Events January 20 In Westminster, the first English parliament conducts its first meeting. Fire destroys parts of Old Cairo. Battle of Evesham August 4 Births Alfonso III of Aragon Emperor Fushimi of Japan May 14 Dante Alighieri, Italian poet. Deaths Simo:

He received also a sufficient and handsome hall well ceiled with oak. On the western side is a worthy bed, on the ground, a stone chimney, a wardrobe and a certain other small chamber; at the eastern end is a pantry and a buttery. Between the hall and the chapel is a sideroom. There is a decent chapel covered with tiles, a portable altar, and a small cross. In the hall are four tables on trestles. There are likewise a good kitchen covered with tiles, with a furnace and ovens, one large, the other small, for cakes, two tables, and alongside the kitchen a small house for baking. Also a new granary covered with oak shingles, and a building in which the dairy is contained, though it is divided. Likewise a chamber suited for clergymen and a necessary chamber. Also a hen-house. These are within the inner gate.

Likewise outside of that gate are an old house for the servants, a good table, long and divided, and to the east of the principle building, beyond the smaller stable, a solar for the use of the servants. Also a building in which is contained a bed, also two barns, one for wheat and one for oats. These buildings are enclosed with a moat, a wall, and a hedge. Also beyond the middle gate is a good barn, and a stable of cows, and another for oxen, these old and ruinous. Also beyond the outer gate is a pigstye.

From J.H. Robinson, trans., University of Pennsylvania Translations and Reprints (1897) in Middle Ages, Volume I: pp283–284.