In  neither  case,  however,  could  the  landlord  re-enter  on
this  land.      The  lords  of  the  manor  had  been  deprived  of  this
right,*   if  it  ever   existed,   by   various   edicts   of  the   former

*  No  point  connected  vvkli  the  mcrliajval  history  of  land  tenure  presents
more  difficulties  than  this  question  of  what  the  manorial  right  of  Overlordship
really  amounted  to,  and  wliether  or  not  it  invested  the  lord  with  a  right  to
possess  himself  with  the  tenant's  land.  Wherever  in  the  Teutonic  Kosmos  we
meet  with  a  manor  and  dependent  "mansi,"  we  are  encountered  by  this
difficulty  and  by  the  difference  between  the  "terra  tenentium  "  and  the
"dominium  villenagium,"  tenant  land  and  dcmcsncVxnA.  If  the  description
of  the  origin  of  manorial  rights  given  in  the  early  part  of  this  essay  is  correct,
it  would  follow  that  what  in  feudal  language  are  called  ''  tenants  "  were
(except  in  the  case  of  servile  townships  settled  on  the  lord's  "allodium")
originally  allodial  owners,  whose  dues  and  services  to  the  manor  were  of  the
nature  of  public  taxes,  which  could  not  invest  the  lord  with  rights  of  property
over  the  lands  of  the  proprietors.     It  is,  however,  certain  that  with  the  estab-


Germanv.]  IX    VARIOUS    COUNTRIES.  259

Hohenzollern  kings.  Frederick  the  Great  imposed  a  fine  of  a
hundred  ducats  on  any  landlord  who  appropriated  to  his  own
use  any  land  held  by  his  peasants.  At  last  a  general  law  was
passed  on  the  subject.  (AUgemeines  Land  Recht  II.  7,
§§  14—16.)

The  manors  were  respectively  held  by  the  Crown,  by  cor-
porations, lay  and  ecclesiastical,  and  by  individual  nobles.
