<P> The Lord of the Manor, his officials, and a Manorial court administered the manor and exercised jurisdiction over the peasantry . The Lord levied rents and required the peasantry to work on his personal lands, called a demesne . </P> <P> In medieval times, little land was owned outright . Instead, the lord had rights given to him by the king and the tenant rented land from the lord . Lords demanded rents, often ruinous, and labour from the tenants, but the tenants had firm user rights to cropland and common land and those rights were passed down from generation to generation . A medieval lord could not evict a tenant nor hire labour to replace him without legal cause . Most tenants likewise were not free without penalty to depart the manor for other locations or occupations . The rise of capitalism and the concept of land as a commodity to be bought and sold led to the demise of the open - field system . The open - field system was gradually replaced over several centuries by private ownership of land, especially after the 15th century in the process known as enclosure in England . France, Germany, and other northern European countries had systems similar to England, although open fields generally endured longer on the continent . Some elements of the open - field system were practised by early settlers in the New England region of the United States . </P> <P> The most visible characteristic of the open - field system was that the arable land belonging to a manor was divided into many long narrow furlongs for cultivation . The fields of cultivated land were unfenced, hence the name open - field system . Each tenant of the manor cultivated several strips of land scattered around the manor . </P> <P> The village of Elton, Cambridgeshire is representative of a medieval open - field manor in England . The manor, whose Lord was an abbot from a nearby monastery, had 13 "hides" of arable land of six virgates each . The acreage of a hide and virgate varied; but at Elton, a hide was 144 acres (58 ha) and a virgate was 24 acres (10 ha). Thus, the total of arable land amounted to 1,872 acres (758 ha). The abbot's demesne land consisted of three hides plus 16 acres (6.5 ha) of meadow and 3 acres (1 ha) of pasture . The remainder of the land was cultivated by 113 tenants who lived in a village on the manor . Counting spouses, children, and other dependents, plus landless people, the total population resident in the manor village was probably 500 to 600 . </P>

The benefit of the french long lot system for dividing land was what