was not a unit in the governmental system; the county was such a unit, so was the hundred. So again was the vill, for the township had many police duties to perform; it was an amerciable, punishable unit; not so the manor, unless it coincided with the vill[853].' And then he proceeds to suggest that the true explanation of the manor is that it represents an estate which could be and was administered as a single economic and agrarian whole. I am unable to follow him entirely as to this last point, because it seems pretty clear that the open field arrangements followed the division into townships, and not those into manors. From the point of view of the services, of the concentration of duties of the tenantry in regard to the lord, the manor was a whole, and for this very reason it was a whole as regards geldability, but this is only one side of the economic structure of society, the upper side, if one may be allowed to say so. The arrangement of actual cultivation is the other side, and it is represented by the township with its communal open fields. Now in a great many cases the estate and the community fitted into each other; and of these instances there is no need to speak any further. But if both did not fit, the agrarian unity is the township and not the manor. The open field system appears in this connexion as outside the manor, and proceeding from the rural community by itself. Let us sum up the results obtained in this chapter. 1. The village communities contained in the manorial system are organised on a system of self-government which affords great help to the lord in many ways, but certainly limits his power materially, and reduces him to the position of a constitutional ruler. 2. The original court of the manor was one and the body of its suitors was one. The distinction between courts for free tenants and customary courts grows up very gradually in the fourteenth century, and later. 3. The steward was not the only judge of the halimot. The judgment came from the whole court, and its suitors, without distinction of class, were necessary judicial assessors. 4. The court of ancient demesne presents the same elements as the ordinary halimot, although it lays greater stress on the communal side of the organisation. 5. The conveyancing entries on the rolls do not prove the want of right on the part of the peasant holders. On the contrary, they go back to very early communal practice. 6. The rule which makes the existence of the manor dependent on the existence of free suitors is derived from the conception of the court as a court of free and lawful men, taking in villains and excluding slaves. 7. The manor by itself is the estate; the rural community and the jurisdiction of the soke are generally fused with it into one whole; but in some cases the two latter elements are seen emerging as independent growths from behind the manorial organisation. CHAPTER VI. THE MANOR AND THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY. _Conclusions._