Legal practice is very explicit as to the limitation of ancient demesne in time and space. It is composed of the manors which belonged to the crown at the time of the Conquest.(2*) This includes manors which had been given away subsequently, and excludes such as had lapsed to the king after the Conquest by escheat or forfeiture.(3*) Possessions granted away by Saxon kings before the Conquest are equally excluded.(4*) In order to ascertain what these manors were the courts reverted to the Domesday description of Terra Regis. As a rule these lands were entered as crown lands, T.R.E. and T.R.W., that is, were considered to have been in the hand of King Edward in 1066, and in the hand of King William in 1086. But strictly and legally they were crown lands at the moment when King William's claim inured, or to use the contemporary phrase, 'on the day when King Edward was alive and dead.' The important point evidently was that the Norman king's right in this case bridged over the Conquest, and for this reason such possessions are often simply said to have been royal demesne in the time of Edward the Confessor. This legal view is well illustrated by a decision of the King's Council, quoted by Belknap, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in 1375. It was held that the manor of Tottenham, although granted by William the Conqueror to the Earl of Chester before the compilation of Domesday, was ancient demesne, as having been in the hands both of St. Edward and of the Conqueror.(5*) And so 1066 and not 1086 is the decisive year for the legal formation of this class of manors.(6*)In many respects the position of the peasantry in ancient demesne is nearly allied to that of men holding in villainage at common law. They perform all kinds of agricultural services and are subject to duties quite analogous to those which prevail in other places; we may find on these ancient manors almost all the incidents of servile custom. Sometimes very harsh forms of distress are used against the tenants;(7*) forfeiture for non-performance of services and non-payments of rents was always impending, in marked contrast with the considerate treatment of free tenantry in such cases.(8*) We often come across such base customs as the payment of merchet in connexion with the 'villain socmen' of ancient demesne.(9*) And such instances would afford ample proof of the fact that their status has branched off from the same stem as villainage, if such proof were otherwise needed.
The side of privilege is not less conspicuous. The indications given by the law books must be largely supplemented from plea rolls and charters. The special favour shown to the population on soil of ancient demesne extends much further than a regulation of manorial duties would imply, it resolves itself to a large extent into an exemption from public burdens. The king's manor is treated as a franchise isolated from the surrounding hundred and shire, its tenants are not bound to attend the county court or the hundred moot,(10*) they are not assessed with the rest for danegeld or common amercements or the murder fine,(11*)they are exempted from the jurisdiction of the sheriff,(12*) and do not serve on juries and assizes before the king's justices;(13*) they are free from toll in all markets and custom-houses.(14*) Last, but not least, they do not get taxed with the country at large, and for this reason they have originally no representatives in parliament when parliament forms itself. On the other hand, they are liable to be tallaged by the king without consent of parliament, by virtue of his private right as opposed to his political right.(15*) This last privilege gave rise to a very abnormal state of things, when ancient demesne land had passed from the crown to a subject. The rule was, that the new lord could not tallage his tenants unless in consequence of a royal writ, and then only at the same time and in the same proportion as the king tallaged the demesnes remaining in his hand.(16*) This was an important limitation of the lord's power, and a consequence of the wish to guard against encroachments and arbitrary acts. But it was at the same time a curious perversion of sovereignty: -- the person living on land of this description could not be taxed with the county,(17*) and if he was taxed with the demesnes, his lord received the tax, and not the sovereign. I need not say that all this got righted in time, but the anomalous condition described did exist originally.
There are traces of a different view by which the power of imposing tallage would have been vested exclusively in the king, even when the manor to be taxed was one that had passed out of his hand.(18*) But the general rule up to the fourteenth century was undoubtedly to relinquish the proceeds to the holder of the manor. Such treatment is eminently characteristic of the conception which lies at the bottom of the whole institution of ancient demesne. It is undoubtedly based on the private privilege of royalty. All the numerous exceptions and exemptions from public liabilities and duties flow from one source: the king does not want his land and his men to be subjected to any vexatious burdens which would lessen their power of yielding income.(19*)Once fenced in by royal privilege, the ancient demesne manor keeps up its private immunity, even though it ceases to be royal.
