If we now examine the conditions under which the manors of the ancient demesne were alienated by the crown, we shall at once see that no very definite line could be drawn between those which had been given away and those which remained in the king's hand. The one class gradually shades off into the other. A very good example is afforded by the history of Stoneleigh Abbey. In 1154 King Henry II gave the Cistercian monks of Radmore in Staffordshire his manor of Stoneleigh in exchange for their possessions in Radmore. The charter as given in the Register of the Abbey seems to amount to a complete grant of the land and of the jurisdiction. Nevertheless, we find Henry II drawing all kinds of perquisites from the place all through his reign, and it is specially noticed that his writs were directed not to the Abbot or the Abbot's bailiffs, but to his own bailiffs in Stoneleigh[192]. In order to get rid of the inconveniences consequent upon such mixed ownership, Abbot William of Tyso bought a charter from King John, granting to the Abbey all the soke of Stoneleigh[193]. But all the same the royal rights did not yet disappear. There were tenants connected with the place who were immediately dependent on the king[194], and his bailiff continued to exercise functions by the side of, and in conjunction with, the officers of the Abbot[195]. In the 50th year of Henry III a remarkable case occurred:--a certain Alexander of Canle was tried for usurping the rights of the Abbot as to the tenantry in the hamlet of Canle, and it came out that one of his ancestors had succeeded in improving his position of collector of the revenue into the position of an owner of the rents. Although the rights which were vindicated against him were the rights of the Abbot, still the king entered into possession and afterwards transferred the possession to the Abbot[196]. In one word, the king is always considered as 'the senior lord' of Stoneleigh; his lordship is something more direct than a mere feudal over-lordship[197]. We find a similar state of things at King's Ripton. The manor had been let in fee farm to the Abbots of Ramsey. In case of a tenement lapsing into the lord's hands, it is seized sometimes by the bailiff of the king, sometimes by the bailiffs of the Abbot[198]. The royal writs again are directed not to the Abbot, but to his bailiff. The same was the case at Stoneleigh[199], and indeed this seems to have been the regular course on ancient demesne manors[200]. This curious way of ignoring the lord himself and addressing the writ directly to his officers seems an outcome of the fundamental assumption that of these manors there was no real lord but the king, and that the private lord's officers were acting as the king's bailiffs.