According to current notions the demesnes of the crown ought not to have been alienated at all. Although alienated by one king they were considered as liable to be resumed by his successors[201]. And as a matter of fact such resumptions were by no means unusual. Edward I gave an adequate expression to this doctrine when he ordered an inquisition into the state of the tenantry at Stoneleigh:--he did not wish any encroachment made on the old constitution of the manor, for he had always in mind the possibility that his royal rights would be resumed by himself or by one of his successors[202]. [Services certain on Royal Manors.] If we turn to the court rolls of a manor which is actually in the king's hand and compare them with those of a manor which he has granted to some convent or some private lord, we see hardly any difference between them. The rolls of the manor of Havering at the Record Office, although comparatively late, afford a good insight into the constitution of a manor retained in the king's own hand. They contain a good many writs of right, and though, naturally enough, the tenants do not bring actions against the king, we find an instance in which the king brings an action against his tenant, and pleads before a court which is held in his own name[203]. This is good proof that the condition of the tenants was by no means dependent on the arbitrary action of the manorial officers. When King Henry II granted Stoneleigh to the Cistercians he displaced a number of 'rustics' from their holdings, and while doing this he recognised their right and enjoined the sheriff of Warwickshire to give them an equivalent for what they had lost in consequence of the grant[204]. The notion from which all inquiry consequent upon a 'Monstraverunt' starts is always this, that the tenants were holding by _certain_ (i.e. by fixed) services at the time when the manor was in the king's own hand. The certainty is not created by the fact that the manor passes away from the king to some one else; it exists when the land is royal land and therefore cannot be destroyed on land that has been alienated. So true is this that Bracton and Britton give their often cited description of privileged villainage without alluding to the question whether or no the manor is still in the king's hand[205]; Britton even applies this description primarily to the king's own possessions by his way of stating the law as the direct utterance of the king's command. The well-known fact that the 'ferm' or rent of royal manors was not always fixed, that we constantly hear of an increased rental (_incrementum_) levied in addition to the old 'ferm' (_assisa_; _redditus antiquitus assisus_), can be easily reconciled with this doctrine[206]. The prosperity of the country was gradually rising; both in agricultural communities and in towns, new tenements and houses, new occupations and revenues were growing, and it was not the interest