ABSTRACT
Modern British agriculture is a business conducted by farmers, many of whom have their land on a lease or tenancy from a landowner, who in some instances is a member of an old county family or of the nobility. The kingdom was divided into manors, lordships or halls, all of which amounted to much the same thing, and all the base service-tenants belonged to one or another of these. The heart of the manor lay in its courts or hallmoots. The franklins or frank or free tenants had their court baron, where the lord’s steward acted as registrar and the franklins or barons judged among themselves. The lands held of the lord of a manor and so conveyed in his courts were called by the Anglo-Saxons ‘folkland’, by the Normans, ‘villein land’, in later times, ‘bondland’ or land of base tenure, and, finally, ‘customary land’.
