THE ORGANIZATION OF AGRICULTURE 151

organization received attention only because the political system
was conditioned by it. The lord and the "home-estate of the
lord," as Vinogradoff truly says, were "tacked on to this settle-
ment and dependent on the work supplied by it;" 1 but the lord
was "tacked on," not to a free village community of which he
was simply the elective chief, but to an agricultural organization
that had come down from the past and which was essential to
the welfare of the new society of which the lord was but one of
the organs. These lords lost control of the industrial organiza-
tion, as the Roman masters never did, and directed their atten-
tion to military and political matters; while the laborers, left
to themselves, worked out an independence which no laborers
had ever before enjoyed. The payment of the firtna unius noctis
to the king is not inconsistent with the servile condition of the
villagers, in view of the nominal claim which the king had on
all lands or of the fact that many domains were granted to nobles
on various conditions by the king; nor is it incredible that such
serfs should sometimes lease the manor and work it for their
common benefit while the lord was away on a crusade; nor do we
find evidence of freedom in the fact that the villagers came to
have customary rights, which few lords could gainsay, to pasture
their sheep and cattle on the uncultivated lands of the manor.
