I. THE SAXON 'HAMS' AND 'TUNS' WERE MANORS WITH VILLAGE COMMUNITIES IN SERFDOM UPON THEM.
The hams and tuns were manors.
Having now ascertained that the open field system was prevalent during Saxon, and probably pre-Saxon times, we have next to inquire whether the 'hams' and 'tuns' to which the common fields belonged were manors—i.e. estates with a village community in serfdom upon them—or whether, on the contrary, there once dwelt within them a free village community holding their yard-lands by freehold or allodial tenure.
Let us at once dismiss from the question the word 'manor.' It was the name generally used in the Domesday Survey, for a thing described in the Survey as already existing at the time of Edward the Confessor. The estate called a manor was certainly as much a Saxon institution under the Confessor as it was a Norman one afterwards.
The Domesday book itself does not always adhere to this single word 'manor' throughout its pages. [p127]
The word manerium gives place in the Exeter Survey to the word villa for the whole manor, and mansio for the manor-house; and the same words, villa and mansio, are also used in the instructions[153] given at the commencement of the Inquisitio Eliensis. It is perfectly clear, then, that what was called a manor or villa, both in the west and in the east of England, was in fact the estate of a lord with a village community in villenage upon it.
In the Boldon Book also the word villa is used instead of manor.
So in Saxon documents the whole manor or estate was called by various names, generally 'ham' or 'tun.'
King Alfred's will.
In King Alfred's will[154] estates in the south-east of England, including the villages upon them, which by Norman scribes would have been called manors, are described as hams (the ham at such a place). In the old English version of the will given in the 'Liber de Hyda' [155] the word 'twune' is used to translate 'ham,' and in the Latin version the word 'villa.' [156]
Parable of the prodigal son.
In the Saxon translation of the parable of the prodigal son, the country estate of the citizen—the 'burh-sittenden man'—to which the prodigal was sent to feed swine, and where he starved upon the 'bean-cods' that the swine did eat, was the citizen's 'tune.' [157]
So that the 'hams' and 'tuns' of Saxon times were in fact commonly private estates with villages upon them, i.e. manors.
Grants of whole manors.
This fact is fully borne out by the series of Saxon [p128] charters from first to last. They generally, as already said, contain grants of whole manors in this sense, including the villages upon them, with all the village fields, pastures, meadows, &c., embraced within the boundaries given. And these boundaries are the boundaries of the whole village or township—i.e. of the whole estate.
Saxon words.
Further, a careful examination of Anglo-Saxon documents will show that the Saxon manors, not only at the time of Edward the Confessor, as shown by the Domesday Survey, but also long previously, were divided into the land of the lord's demesne and the land in villenage, though the Norman phraseology was not yet used. The lord of the manor was a thane or 'hlaford.' The demesne land was the thane's inland. All classes of villeins were called geneats. The land in villenage was the geneat-land, or the gesettes-land, or sometimes the gafol-land. And further, this geneat-, or gesettes-, or gafol-land was composed, like the later land in villenage, of hides and yard-lands, whilst the villein tenants of it, as in the Domesday Survey, were divided mainly into two classes: (1) the geburs (villani proper), or holders of yard-lands; and (2) the cottiers with their smaller holdings. Beneath these two classes of holders of geneat land were the theows or slaves, answering to the servi of the Survey. Lastly, there is clear evidence that this was so as early as the date of the laws of King Ine, which claim to represent the customs of the seventh century.
To the proof of these points attention must now be directed. [p129]