MANERIUM (à monendo, because the usual residence of the owner), seems to have been a district of ground held by lords or great personages; who kept in their own hands so much land as was necessary for the use of their families, which were called terre dominicales, or demesne lands; being occupied by the lord, as dominus manerii, and his servants. The other, or tenemental lands, they distributed among their tenants; which, from the different modes of tenure, were called and distinguished by two different names.—First, book-land, or charter land, which was held by deed under certain rents and free services, and in effect differed nothing from free socage lands: and from hence have arisen most of the freehold tenants who hold of particular manors, and owe suit and service to the same. The other species was called folk-land, which was held by no assurance in writing, but distributed among the common folk, or people at the pleasure of the lord, and resumed at his discretion; being indeed land held in villenage. See VILLENAGE.

The residue of the manor, being uncultivated, was termed the lord's waste, and served for public roads, and for common of pasture to the lord and his tenants. Manors were formerly called baronies, as they still are lordships; and each lord or baron was empowered to hold a domestic court, called the court baron, for redressing misdemeanors and nuisances within the manor, and for settling disputes of property among the tenants. This court is an inseparable ingredient of every manor; and if the number of suitors should fail, as not to leave sufficient to make a jury or homage, that is, two tenants at the least, the manor itself is lost.

In the early times of our legal constitution, the king's greater barons, who had a large extent of territory held under the crown, granted out frequently smaller manors to inferior persons to be held of themselves; which do therefore now continue to be held under a superior lord, who is called in such cases the lord paramount over all these manors; and his seignory is frequently termed an honour, not a manor; especially if it hath belonged to an ancient feudal baron, or hath been at any time in the hands of the crown. In imitation whereof, these inferior lords began to carve out and grant to others still more minute estates to be held as of themselves, and were so proceeding downwards in infinitum, till the superior lords observed, that, by this method of subinfeudation, they lost all their feudal profits of wardships, marriages, and cheats, cheats, which fell into the hands of these mesne or middle lords, who were the immediate superiors of the terre tenant, or him who occupied the land; and also that the mesne lords themselves were so impoverished thereby, that they were disabled from performing their services to their own superiors. This occasioned, first, that provision in the 34th chapter of magna charta, 9 Hen. III. (which is not to be found in the first chapter granted by that prince, nor in the great charter of King John), that no man should either give or sell his land without referring sufficient to answer the demands of his lord; and, afterwards, the statute of Welfm. 3. or quia emptores, 18 Edw. I. c. 1. which directs, that, upon all sales, or seisinments of land, the feoffee shall hold the same, not of his immediate feoffor, but of the chief lord of the fee, of whom such feoffor himself held it. But these provisions not extending to the king's own tenants in capite, the like law concerning them is declared by the statutes of prerogativa regis, 17 Edward II. c. 6. and of 34 Edw. III. c. 15. by which last all subinfeudations, previous to the reign of King Edward I. were confirmed; but all subsequent to that period were left open to the king's prerogative. And from hence it is clear, that all manors exsisting at this day, must have exsisted as early as King Edward the First: for it is essential to a manor, that there be tenants who hold of the lord; and, by the operation of these statutes, no tenant in capite since the accession of that prince, and no tenant of a common lord since the statute of quia emptores, could create any new tenant to hold of himself. See VILLENAGE.