Regulated Space and the Feudal State

Abstract

As a subject, geography has experienced a phase of intense intellectual colonisation over recent years. Yet despite its greatly expanded horizons, many of its practitioners would still look upon feudalism as being terra incognito. This neglect is surprising, for medievalists like Maitland and Stenton talked freely about ‘feudal geography’. They had in mind the way in which basic units of feudalism, like the knight’s fee and manor, were disposed across the countryside. Seen as a straightforward exercise in mapping, such a reconstruction certainly lies within the compass of the geographer. Geographers, though, have hardly responded to this task. With the notable exception of Glanville Jones’s work on multiple estates (Jones, 1976, pp. 15–40), the most laudable attempts at mapping the pattern of lordship have been by historians. If we examine what is still the most significant piece of work by any historical geographer — Darby’s Domesday Geographies — we find that the most important single obstacle which he struggled to overcome was the reconstitution of vills as geographical units, the units which the Domesday Commissioners had perversely torn apart in order to present their data on a feudal basis, that is, per tenant-in-chief.