Royal writ for the capture, arrest and imprisonment of an excommunicate who after forty days was still unreconciled and whose name had been sent to the chancery by the bishop . A person required to answer in an action . Land from which peasants' grazing animals were temporarily or permanently excluded. The English statute of 1401 for the burning of heretics . The part of the lord's manorial lands reserved for his own use an not allocated to his serfs or freeholder tenants.
Serfs work the demesne for a specified numbers of days per week.
The demesne may either be scattered among the serfs land, or a separate area, the latter being more common for meadow and orchard lands. That land retained in the landlord's hand and cultivated by himself or leased out, as opposed to tenant land held by hereditary peasant tenants. Lands at one time held by the crown. Tenants of the ancient demesne were privileged and could not be treated as villeins . It was an honorary title in the court hierarchy, and though on occasions it was given to the holder of a territory, the title still reflected the holder's position in the Byzantine court rather than his position as ruler of his holding.