Note 398 — Chapter I · THE NEW RURAL ECONOMY

Thus in 1535, on nineteen out of twenty-two manors owned by Battle Abbey, the demesne was farmed by a single tenant, on one by two, on one by three, while on one it was retained in the hands of the monks (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. i.; English Monasteries on the Eve of the Dissolution, by A. Savine). On twenty-five manors out of thirty-two held by the Earl of Pembroke in 1568, the same unified management obtained (Roxburghe Club, Surveys of Pembroke Manors). Savine’s remarks are to the point: “The lord of the manor seldom divided up the demesne into separate plots of land to be let to local tenants. Usually the demesne and its buildings, sometimes even together with the live and dead stock, passed into the hands of one farmer" (ibid.).