ABSTRACT
‘Farming out’, that is leasing the whole manor as a going concern to a ‘farmer’ for a fixed rent in money or kind, seems to have been the typical way in which great estates were exploited by their owners in the twelfth century; at least this is the impression one gets from the Pipe Rolls and the surviving twelfth-century Surveys, and there are reasons to believe that, though the number of the latter is relatively small, the situation they depict is representative of the country at large. 1 This disengagement from direct cultivation on the part of the landlords was usually also accompanied by the actual contraction of the area of the demesne itself.
