ABSTRACT
Wherever feudalism existed, this peasantry dwelt in huddled villages and little hamlets upon the manors of the nobles and of the Church, and hence may be called the manorial peasantry. Manorialism, was the relation of the noble as a landed proprietor to his servile tenantry. It was the relation of master and servant. For the ultimate title to all the land of the village was vested in the lord of the manor who owned the village. The four kinds of common land in the manor explain their own nature: the pasture, the meadow, the woods, and the waste. For the population of Europe began rapidly to increase in the eleventh century, so that almost every manorial village grew in numbers and required more land for cultivation. The manorial proprietors discovered that it was economically more profitable to employ freemen as hired day-laborers because they worked with better spirit and produced more than serfs.
