Editing Manorialism (section)

== Description ==
[[Image:The Hall at Penshurst Place from Ancestral Homes of Noted Americans by Anne Hollingsworth Wharton (1915).jpg|thumb|The great hall at [[Penshurst Place]], [[Kent]], built in the mid 14th century. A manor house hall was where the lord and his family ate, received guests, and conferred with dependents.]] 

The word derives from traditional inherited divisions of the countryside, reassigned as local jurisdictions known as '''manors''' or '''[[seigneuries]]'''; each manor being 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 '''[[manorial court]]''', governed by public law and local custom. Not all territorial seigneurs were secular; [[bishops]] and [[abbots]] also held lands that entailed similar obligations.

By extension, the word ''manor'' is sometimes used in England as a slang term for any home area or territory in which authority is held, often in a police or criminal context.<ref>{{cite news| url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1559330/Terror-raids-on-homes-of-uranium-ex-employee.html | work=The Daily Telegraph | location=London | title=Terror raids on homes of uranium ex-employee | author=Stewart Payne | date=2007-08-03 | access-date=2010-05-12}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.londonslang.com/db/m/ |title=London Slang - M |access-date=2009-04-29 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090208090911/http://www.londonslang.com/db/m/ |archive-date=2009-02-08 }}</ref>

In the generic plan of a medieval manor<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd_1911/shepherd-c-104.jpg|title=Plan of Medieval Manor by William R. Shepherd|website=University of Texas Libraries|access-date=3 October 2023}}</ref> from ''Shepherd's Historical Atlas'',<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/history_shepherd_1911.html|title=Historical Atlas |publisher=Perry–Castañeda Map Collection&nbsp;– UT Library Online |author=William R. Shepherd}}</ref> the strips of individually worked land in the open field system are immediately apparent. In this plan, the manor house is set slightly apart from the village, but equally often the village grew up around the [[Courtyard|forecourt]] of the manor, formerly walled, while the manor lands stretched away outside, as still may be seen at [[Petworth House]]. As concerns for privacy{{dubious|date=March 2014}} increased in the 18th century,{{citation needed|date=March 2014}} manor houses were often located a farther distance from the village. For example, when a grand new house was required by the new owner of [[Harlaxton Manor]], Lincolnshire, in the 1830s, the site of the existing manor house at the edge of its village was abandoned for a new one, isolated in its park, with the village out of view.{{Citation needed|date=September 2009}}

In an agrarian society, the conditions of land tenure underlie all social or economic factors. There were two legal systems of pre-manorial landholding. One, the most common, was the system of holding land ''"[[allodial]]ly"'' in full outright ownership. The other was a use of ''precaria'' or [[benefice]]s, in which land was held conditionally (the root of the English 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 [[Visigoths|Visigothic]] refugees who had fled with his retreating forces after the failure of his [[Zaragoza]] expedition of 778. He solved this problem by allotting "desert" tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the royal ''[[fisc]]'' 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 [[Narbonne]] (see Lewis, links). In former Roman settlements, a system of [[villa]]s, dating from Late Antiquity, was inherited by the medieval world.

=== The seigneur ===
[[File:Bachritterburg.jpg|thumb|Reconstruction of a medieval castle, Bachritterburg, Baden-Württemberg|260x260px]]

The possessor of a seigneurie bears the title of "[[Imperial, royal and noble ranks|Lord]]". He can be an individual, in the vast majority of cases a national of the [[nobility]] or of the [[Bourgeoisie]], but also a [[judicial person]] most often an ecclesiastical institution such as an [[abbey]], a [[cathedral]] or canonical chapter or a military order. The power of the lord was exercised through various intermediaries, the most important of which was the [[Bailiff (France)|bailiff]]. The sovereign can also be a lord; the seigneuries he owns form the royal domain.

The title of lord is also granted, especially in modern times, to individuals holding noble fiefdoms which are not for all that seigneuries. These "lords" are sometimes called sieurs, equivalent terms in medieval times.

=== The land lordship ===
The lord is the direct or prominent owner of the land assets of his lordship. The notion of absolute ownership over a common good cannot be applied, because there are also others than the main user who have rights over these goods. We{{who|date=March 2021}} distinguish in the land lordship two sets the reserves which is the set of goods of which the lord reserves the direct exploitation and [[tenant-in-chief]], property whose exploitation is entrusted to a tenant against payment of a royalty, most often called cens and services such as [[Corvée]]. The distribution between reserve and tenure varies depending on the period and region.<ref>[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/corv%C3%A9e corvée noun]</ref>