Descriptions of English rural arrangements in the age we are studying always suppose the country to be divided into manors, and each of these manors to consist of a central portion called the demesne, and of a cluster of holdings in different tributary relations to this central portion. Whether we take the Domesday Survey, or the Hundred Rolls, or the Custumal of some monastic institution, or the extent of lands belonging to some deceased lay lord, we shall again and again meet the same typical arrangement. I do not say that there are no instances swerving from this beaten track, and that other arrangements never appear in our records. Still the general system is found to be such as I have just mentioned, and a very peculiar system it is, equally different from the ancient _latifundia_ or modern plantations cultivated by gangs of labourers working on a large scale and for distant markets, from peasant ownership scattered into small and self-dependent households, and even from the conjunction between great property and farms taken on lease and managed as separate units of cultivation. The characteristic feature of the medieval system is the close connexion between the central and dominant part and the dependent bodies arranged around it. We have had occasion to speak in some detail of these tributary bodies--it is time to see how the lord's demesne which acted as their centre was constituted. [The home-farm.] Bracton mentions as the distinguishing trait of the demesne, that it is set aside for the lord's own use, and ministers to the wants of his household[679]. Therefore it is sometimes called in English 'Board Lands.' The definition is not complete, however, because all land occupied by the owner himself must be included under the name of demesne, although its produce may be destined not for his personal use, but for the market. 'Board lands' are only one species of domanial land, so also are the 'Husfelds' mentioned in a charter quoted by Madox[680]. This last term only points to its relation to the house, that is the manorial house. And both denominations are noteworthy for their very incompleteness, which testifies indirectly to the restricted area and to the modest aims of domanial cultivation. Usually it lies in immediate connexion with the manorial house, and produces almost exclusively for home consumption.