<P> As the Germanic kingdoms succeeded Roman authority in the West in the fifth century, Roman landlords were often simply replaced by Germanic ones, with little change to the underlying situation or displacement of populations . </P> <P> The process of rural self - sufficiency was given an abrupt boost in the eighth century, when normal trade in the Mediterranean Sea was disrupted . The thesis put forward by Henri Pirenne, while disputed widely, supposes that the Arab conquests forced the medieval economy into even greater ruralization and gave rise to the classic feudal pattern of varying degrees of servile peasantry underpinning a hierarchy of localised power centers . </P> <P> The word derives from traditional inherited divisions of the countryside, reassigned as local jurisdictions known as manors or seigneuries; each manor being subject to a lord (French seigneur), usually holding his position in return for undertakings offered to a higher lord (see Feudalism). The lord held a manorial court, governed by public law and local custom . Not all territorial seigneurs were secular; bishops and abbots also held lands that entailed similar obligations . </P> <P> By extension, the word manor is sometimes used in England to mean any home area or territory in which authority is held, often in a police or criminal context . </P>

Who owned the manor in the middle ages