the English counties were much larger than the bailiwicks of the Norman
viscount, and the authority of the sheriff, when he was relieved from
the company of the ealdorman, and was soon to lose that of the bishop,
would have no check except the direct control of the King. If William
perceived this, it was too late to prevent it entirely; some of the
sheriffdoms became hereditary, and continued to be so long after the
abuse had become constitutionally dangerous.

The independence of the greater feudatories was still further limited by
the principle, which the Conqueror seems to have observed, of avoiding
the accumulation in any one hand of a great number of contiguous
estates. The rule is not without some important exceptions, and it may
have been suggested by the diversity of occasions on which the fiefs
were bestowed, but the result is one which William must have foreseen.
An insubordinate baron whose strength lay in twelve different counties
would have to rouse the suspicions and perhaps to defy the arms of
twelve powerful sheriffs, before he could draw his forces to a head. In
his manorial courts, scattered and unconnected, he could set up no
central tribunal, nor even force a new custom upon his tenants, nor
could he attempt oppression on any extensive scale. By such limitation
the people were protected and the central power secured.

Yet the changes of ownership, even thus guarded, wrought other changes.
It is not to be supposed that the Norman baron, when he had received his
fief, proceeded to carve it out into demesne and tenants' land as if he
were making a new settlement in an uninhabited country. He might indeed
build his castle and enclose his chase with very little respect to the
rights of his weaker neighbors, but he did not attempt any such radical
change as the legal theory of the creation of manors seems to presume.
The name "manor" is of Norman origin: but the estate to which it was