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Rh were liable to pay fines, to get their cattle impounded, to have their property distrained upon. Of course, the processes of customary law were greatly hampered and even modified by the fact that the freeholders had access to the royal courts, and so could challenge the verdicts of the manorial jurisdiction and the decisions of the township in the royal courts. And undoubtedly the firm footing obtained by freeholders in this respect enabled them on many occasions to thwart the petty jurisdiction of their neighbours, and to set up claims which were not in keeping with a subjection to by-laws made by the manorial community. But this clashing of definitions and attributes, though unavoidable in view of the ambiguous position of freeholders, must not prevent us from recognising the second principle of their condition as well as the first; they were not merely tenants by contract but also members of a village community and subjected to its by-laws.

After what has been said of the position of the tenants, we need not dwell very long on the standing of the lord and of his immediate helpers. The lord was a monarch in the manor, but a monarch fettered by a customary constitution and by contractual rights. He was often strong enough to break through these customs and agreements, to act in an arbitrary way, to indulge in cruelty and violence. But in the great majority of cases feelings and caprice gave way to reasonable considerations. A reasonable lord could not afford to disregard the standards of fairness and justice which were set up by immemorial custom, and a knowledge of the actual conditions of life. A mean line had to be struck between the claims of the rulers and the interests of the subjects, and along this mean line by-laws were framed and customs grew up which protected the tenantry even though it was forsaken by the king's judges. This unwritten constitution was safeguarded not only by the apprehension that its infringement might scatter the rustic population on whose labour the well-being of the lord and his retainers after all depended, but also by the necessity of keeping within bounds the power of the manorial staff of which the lord had to avail himself. This staff comprised the stewards and seneschals who had to act as overseers of the whole, to preside in the manorial courts, to keep accounts, to represent the lord on all occasions: the reeves who, though chosen by the villagers, acted as a kind of middlemen between them and the lord and had to take the lead in the organisation of all the rural services; the beadles and radknights or radmen who had to serve summonses and to carry orders; the various warders, such as the hayward, who had to superintend hedges, the woodward for pastures and wood, the sower and the thresher; the graves of moors and dykes who had to look after canals, ditches and drainage; the ploughmen and herdsmen, employed for the use of the domanial plough-teams and herds. All these ministri had to be kept in check by a well-advised landlord, and one of the most efficient checks on them was