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484 Edward I. The social distinction between the military class and the rural labouring class, the natural husbandry, which dispensed to a great extent with commercial intercourse and money dealings, produced in all western countries the subjection of villeins and the super-imposition of a lord's demesne on the holdings of the working-class. But instead of assuming the form of a union between the lord's demesne and a firmly organised village community, the central economy of the lord had to deal in France with loose clusters of separate settlements, while in Germany the communal element combined with the domanial in all sorts of chance ways, which, though very advantageous in some cases, did not develop without difficulty into a firmly established and generally recognised body of rural custom.

In England things were different. There can be hardly any doubt that through the strong constitution, rooted in custom, of its manor England, in its social development, got quite as much start of its neighbours, as it obtained precedence over them politically through the early growth of parliamentary institutions.