This view of the position of the gesithcund and twelve-hynde class rests very much upon the incidental evidence of the Dooms of Ine, but the truth of it is confirmed by the independent evidence of the precious fragment already referred to. For its interesting evidence shows that, in addition to his holding of five hides of land, it was precisely into this position of gafol-paying and service direct to the king that the ceorl of ancient custom had to climb in order to earn the gesithcund status and the twelve-hynde wergeld.
Thus we arrive at a definite and practical mark distinguishing ultimately, and perhaps more or less from the first, the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes.
The twelve-hynde or landed class paid gafol and did service direct to the king. The twy-hynde or dependent class paid gafol and did service to the landed class, who from this point of view were middlemen between the twy-hynde gafolgelda and the king.
The holding direct from the king easily becomes a manor.
We seem, therefore, thus early to arrive at something analogous to Professor Maitland’s technical definition of the Manor as the fiscal unit from which gafol is paid direct to the king, while its lord is the receiver of the payments and services of its tenants. The single landholder who is not under a manorial lord in the Domesday survey is said to hold ‘as for a manor’—though he may have no tenants.
Tribal character of the manor as a judicial unit.
It may be worth while in this connection to allude to another general feature of the manorial estate on both sides of the Channel which if not directly of tribal origin must at least have worked in close sympathy with tribal custom.
The gesithcund man officially charged with the control of a district or estate easily became in a manorial sense lord of the dependent tenants upon it. And the judicial and magisterial adjunct to the lordship became a prevalent feature of the typical manor.
We have seen that the ‘sac and soc’ of later times may have grown from the root of the tribal principle involved in the sacredness of the precinct or area of protection of the chieftain and, in degree, of every grade of tribesman who possessed a homestead. How large a place this principle occupied is shown by the prominence of the fredus in Frankish law and of the mundbyrd in the early Anglo-Saxon laws. The manor was a complex product of many factors, and tribal custom was certainly one of them.
Was it a family holding?