The local agency by which the Normans enforced these arrangements was
the manor. The Anglo-Saxons had organized shires and hundreds, but the
lowest unit, township or vill seems to have had no organization except,
perhaps, for agricultural purposes. The Danegeld, which William imposed
after the Domesday survey, was assessed on the hundreds, as though
there were no smaller units from which it could be levied. But the
hundred was found too cumbrous for the efficient control of local
details; it was divided into manors, the Normans using for this purpose
the germs of dependent townships which had long been growing up in
England; and the agricultural organization of the township was
dovetailed into the jurisdictional organization of the manor. The lord
became the lord of all the land on the manor, the owner of a court
which tried local disputes; but he rarely possessed that criminal
jurisdiction in matters of life and death which was common in
continental feudalism; and if he did, it was only by special royal
grant, and he was gradually deprived of it by the development of royal
courts of justice, which drew to themselves large parts of manorial
jurisdiction.

These and other matters were reserved for the old courts of the shire
and hundred, which the Norman kings found it advisable to encourage as
a check upon their barons; for the more completely the natives and
villagers were subjected to their lords, the more necessary was it for
the king to maintain his hold upon their masters. For this reason
William imposed the famous Salisbury oath. In France the sub-tenant was
bound to follow and obey his immediate lord rather than the king.
William was determined that every man's duty to the king should come
first. Similarly, he separated church courts from the secular courts,
in order that the former might be saved from the feudal influence of