[106.] The question of the personal status of the villein tenant is a different one from that of villein tenure. Sir H. S. Maine (Early Law and Custom, p. 333) and Mr. F. Pollock (in his Notes on Early English Land Law, 'Law Mag. and Review' for May 1882) have pointed out that, according to Bracton, free men might be subject to villein tenure and its incidents (except the merchetum on marriage of a daughter) and yet personally be free, as contrasted with the nativi' or villeins by blood. Compare Bracton f. 4 b with f. 26 a and 208 b. The question of the origin of the confusion of status in serfdom will be referred to hereafter.
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CHAPTER III. THE DOMESDAY SURVEY (A.D. 1086).
I. THERE WERE MANORS EVERYWHERE.
The manor.
In the Domesday Survey, as might be expected from the evidence of the foregoing chapter, the unit of inquiry is everywhere the manor, and the manor was a landowner's estate, with a township or village community in villenage upon it, under the jurisdiction of the lord of the manor.
But the same person was often the lord of many manors.
Manors of the king,
1,422 manors were in the ancient demesne of the Crown at the date of the Survey,[107] and most of them had also been Crown manors in the time of Edward the Confessor. Thus, for centuries after the Conquest, the Domesday book was constantly appealed to as evidence that this manor or that was of 'ancient demesne,' i.e. that it was a royal manor in the time of Edward the Confessor; because the tenants of these manors claimed certain privileges and immunities which other tenants did not enjoy. [p083]