Manors in ing of cattle and the laying out of highways; of the manner in which it admitted and excluded members, the student of the history of the village community is not only reminded of the township as it first appears in Britain in historic times, but of the primitive Teutonic mark as it originally existed in the first home land of the race on the shores of the Northern Ocean.1 The fact that the township, stripped of its feudal aspect as the manor, and of its ecclesiastical aspect as the parish, reappeared in its primitive Teutonic form upon the soil of New England, must not lead to the inference that it did not elsewhere appear in each of its discarded characters. In the colony of Maryland, whose constitutional history begins under the aristocratic influence of Lord Baltimore, who had authority to model his colony after the Palatinate of Durham,2 the township reappeared as the manor with its feudal relations intact, lord of the manor and his tenants, free and servile, manor-house, church, court baron, court leet and all. The Proprietor evidence as to the origin and structure of old Maryland manors is of a very clear and satisfactory character. The proprietor under his charter right issued, in 1636, instructions to the governor that every two thousand acres granted to any adventurer should "be erected and created into a manor. . . . And we do hereby further authorize you that you cause to be granted to every of the said Adventurers within every of their said manors respectively. . . a Court Baron and Court Leet, to be from time to time held."4 By general instructions of this character often repeated, and by special grants made under them to particular individuals, the foundations were laid of a manorial system which "became general, so that English manors, English halls, English lords of the manor were scattered all over "5 the colony of Mary founds the system. 1 For the history of the New England town, see "The Germanic Origin of N. E. Towns," H. B. Adams, J. H. Studies, 1st series, II.; "Town and County Government," E. Channing, 2d series, X.; Fiske, Am. Political Ideas, pp. 17-56; "Town Meeting," by Fiske, in Harper's Magazine, January, 1885; Scott's Development of Constitutional Liberty, p. 174; Doyle, Eng. Colonies in Am., Puritan, etc., vol. ii. pp. 7–26. 2 "Although Palatine rights were granted to the Lord Proprietor, yet practically, from the very outset, the government of Maryland was a government by the people." -"Introduction to Am. Inst. Hist.," J. H. Studies, 1st series, I. p. 16, in note by Dr. Adams. A special study of the Palatinate of Durham has been made by Mr. Basil Sollers. 3 See Charter of Maryland, art. 19. 4 Instructions from Lord Baltimore to Governor Calvert, quoted in "Old Maryland Manors," by Mr. John John. son, J. H. Studies, 1st series, VII. 6 Ibid., p. 7. baron at St. land. Coke tells us that, "A court baron is the chief prop and pillar of a manor, which no sooner faileth, but the manor falleth to the ground." In Maryland the court baron was not wanting. From Bozman 2 we learn that "one or two rare instances occurred of the holding both courts baron and courts leet in two distinct manors. 'A court baron was held A court at the manor of St. Gabriel on the 7th of March, 1656, by the Gabriel's steward of the lady of the manor when one Martin Kirke took manor; of the lady of the manor in full court, by delivery of the said steward, by the rod, according to the custom of the said manor, one messuage, having done fealty to the lady, was thereby admitted tenant.' (MS. Extracts from the records.) This seems to have been conformable to the ancient practice of courts baron in England, on the admission of any tenant of a manor." But what is more important still, in the manuscript records of a court leet and a court baron of St. Clement's a court leet manor in St. Mary's County - the property of the Maryland ent's. Historical Society is contained incontestable evidence of the fact that a court leet was held in that manor at intervals between 1659 and 1672. "In 1776 there were still unsold seventy thousand acres of proprietary manors lying in nine counties. In the Maryland Reports is to be found a notable lawsuit over Anne Arundel Manor. The proprietor, Lord Frederick Calvert, sought by means of a common recovery to break the entail upon the manor, and thus prevent its passing into the hands of a natural son of the former proprietor." 5 The evidence is equally clear as to the existence in New Manors in York of the manorial system. The agent which Holland employed in the colonization of New Netherland was the West India Company, whose general government was vested, 1 Coke's Copyholder, p. xxxi. 2 History of Maryland, vol. ii. p. 581. In an editorial note, p. 25, of "Old Maryland Manors," Dr. Adams says, "Here, then, is instanced by Bozman himself a concrete case of a manorial court, the records of which Mr. Bozman appears to have seen." These records, presented to the society by Col. B. Ü. Campbell, are printed as an appendix to Old Maryland Manors, pp. 31-38. "The Court Leet, the existence of which in Maryland has long been de nied, was a popular institution, a kind 5 Old Maryland Manors, p. 8. For at St. Clem New York The "pa troon lord of the manor. by the charter granted in 1621, in a board composed of nineteen delegates. In June, 1629, the States-General ratified the document called "Freedoms and Exemptions " previously granted by the governing body of the West India Company "to all such as shall plant any colonies in New Netherland." Under the immunity thus granted and confirmed, each proprietor or "patroon" who planted a colony of fifty souls, upwards of fifteen years old, was not only entitled to a large expanse of territory "as a perpetual inheritance," but he was also authorized to erect it into a seignorial fief or manor within which he was entitled to many of the feudal rights incident to lordship. The colonist, whom the "patroon" was required to furnish with a well equipped farm, was bound in return to pay to the lord a fixed rent, in addition to a portion of the product of the farm and a part of the increase of the stock. The tenant could not sell his produce elsewhere until the lord had first refused to buy it; he was required to have his grain ground at the lord's mill; from the lord he had to obtain a license to fish and hunt within the domain.1 As lord of the manor the "patroon" was the heir of all who died intestate,2 and as such he was empowered "to administer civil and criminal justice in person or by deputy within his colonie, to appoint local officers and magistrates; to erect courts and to take cognizance of all crimes committed within his limits." 3 Theoretically, the patroon was always present in his court baron. Practically, the government of the colony was administered by a court composed of two commissaries and two schepens, assisted by the colonial secretary and the schout." 4 The manorial system thus established by the Dutch in New Netherland was perpetuated under English forms, after the territory was conquered by the English and transformed into the colony of New York. In Livingston the patent creating Livingston Manor, granted by Governor Dongan in 1686, authority was given for establishing “in the said Lordship and Mannor one Court Leet and one Court Baron... to be kept by the said Robert Livingston his Heirs and assignes for ever or theire or any of theire Stewards Manorial courts. manor. 1 See "Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River," Elting, J. H. Studies, 4th series, I. pp. 12-16. 2 Broadhead's Hist. of N. Y., p. 305. 8 O'Callaghan, Hist. of New Nether land, vol. i. p. 320. 4 Broadhead's Hist. of N. Y., p. 305 a self-gov Deputed and appointed,"1 etc. Under the English and Dutch manorial systems thus established in Maryland and New Netherland the proprietors or "patroons" were nothing more nor less than feudal lords who were endowed with the right to exercise within their own manors all of the feudal incidents of tenure and jurisdiction. Thus did the dying feudalism attempt to strike its roots into the free soil of the New World as a permanent institution. The effort was of course shortlived. In spite of the oppressive seignorial rights granted to The manor the lord, the fact remained that the manor was a self-govern- erning coming community. In the court baron the free tenants acted munity. both as judges and jurors; in the court leet criminal justice could only be enforced against a tenant through the judgment of his peers. In the leet the manorial officers were elected by the tenants, who there enacted by-laws for their own government.2 The growth of local political life in Maryland and New York, although hampered and retarded for a time by the feudal obstructions by which it was surrounded, soon waxed strong enough to break through them all, and to cast aside as obsolete and worthless the shell in which it had passed the period of its incubation. Having noted the reappearance in New England of the The parish in Virginia. English village community in its primitive form as the township, and in Maryland and New York in its feudal form as the manor, let us turn next to Virginia, where it reappears in its ecclesiastical form as the parish. As the township was the form of local organization specially demanded by the social and economic wants of the settlers of New England, it there reappeared as the primary unit of local self-government. "Upon the township was formed the county, composed of several towns similarly organized; the state composed of several counties," etc. Thus in New England, as a general rule, we find the state to be an aftergrowth which arises out of a process of aggregation in which the township is the unit or starting-point. In Virginia, which will be accepted. throughout as a typical representative of the colonial group to which she belonged, the work of state-building, guided by 1 Docs. Relating to Col. Hist. of N. Y., 3 Mr. L. H. Morgan's Address herevol. ii. pp. 375, 376. tofore cited. 2 See Old Maryland Manors, pp. 14 the peculiar social and agricultural wants of the first settlers, proceeded upon entirely different principles. In Virginia the colony was first created as an entirety and then subdivided ties in 1634 into self-governing districts as rapidly as they were demanded Virginia first divided into coun Virginia towns grow into counties which are by the growth of population. As early as 1618 the governor and council were ordered to divide the colony into counties;1 not until 1634, however, was such a division actually made. In that year the colony was divided into eight shires which were to be governed as English shires were governed, with lieutenants and sheriffs, and "sergeants and bailiffs where need requires." The eight shires 2 "were James City, the country around Jamestown, Henrico, around the settlement of Sir Thomas Dale, Charles City, Elizabeth City, Warwick River, Warrosquayack, Charles River, and on the eastern shore, Accomac. That these counties, as a rule, took their names from and embraced the settlements is a curious phase in English institutions for it was nothing more or less than the towns growing into the counties. This was very different from the origin of counties in England and in New England. . . . In 1680 there were twenty counties, a word divided into introduced into the laws in 1639, and the number increased parishes. as it became necessary. . . . When the county had finally become crystallized, it was divided into parishes, precincts for the constables, and walks for the surveyors of highways, the last two divisions being subject to such rules and alterations as the county court thought fit to make." When the Virginia parish thus appears in its normal shape it is as a subdivision of the county-a subordinate unit subject to the direction and control of the county court. The parish which, like its prototype, thus stood in a subordinate relation to the county, was endowed with all of the ecclesiastical, and nearly all of the civil authority possessed by the English original. "The parish was, as a rule, a division of the county for religious purposes; but the governing body of the parish, the vestry, had considerable authority in civil affairs." 4 "The township of New England was the parish of England, shorn of its ecclesiastical powers; the parish of Virginia was the 1 See Rev. P. Slaughter's History of 8 Local Institutions of Virginia, Ingle, Bristol Parish, 2d ed., p. 4; Town and pp. 81-83. County Govt., Channing, p. 43. 2 Hening, vol. i. pp. 223, 224. Town and County Govt., p. 48. |