the nation is not bound to pay a tax to the imposition of which it has
not consented through its representatives (the constitutional rule on
which the development of Parliament depended later on) certainly has
its roots in the feudal maxim that no baron was bound by ordinances in
the "establishment of which he had not taken a part. It is also not
alien to our purpose o notice that the distinction between greater and
smaller barons suggested by the far-reaching differences, in regard to the
appropriation of public power, afforded a germ for the subsequent rise of
aristocratic "Second Chambers." The House of Lords, as a court, is a house of
peers, and it is not only in England that the prominence of
the magnates secured for them a special personal standing in legislative
organisation: a curious parallel, all the more instructive because it is
supplied by a mieroscopic state, is presented by the history of Béaru in the Pyrenees. In that vicomté, an aristocratic council of twelve hereditary jurati, drawn from the most powerful houses of local nobility, appears as
the cour majour and acts as a standing committee of the full court
(cour plénière). It had to settle disputes between the viscounts and
their vassals and in general to control the current administration of
law[1].
A survey of medieval society from the one point of view of contractual relations would, however, be incomplete, one-sided and artificial. In order to be correct it ought to be matched by an examination of the constituent elements combining to form the feudal organisation. Such an examination would have to take each feudal unit singly and to describe the rule of the lord over his subjects as well as the work of these subjects.
The most characteristic type of such a feudal unit is certainly the English manor, and I should like to turn now to a study of it which will afford a key to the understanding of similar phenomena in other countries of Western Europe. The manor is a necessary outcome of so-called natural husbandry, providing for the requirements of life by work carried out on the spot, without much exchanging and buying. It is the connecting link in the social life of classes, some of which are primarily occupied with the rough work of feeding, clothing and housing society, while others specialise in defending it and providing for its secular and spiritual government. It presents the lowest and most efficient unit of medieval organisation, and local justice, administration and police are all more or less dependent on its arrangements. Let us look at the different elements of which this historical group is composed.
First of all there is the economic element. The manor afforded the most convenient, and even the necessary, arrangements of work and profit in those times. It would be quite wrong to assume that the interests and rights of the many were simply sacrificed to the interests and rights of a few rulers, that the manor was nothing but an estate, cultivated
- ↑ Cadier, Les États du Béarn, quoted by Luchaire, Manuel, p. 254.
