Balázs György (szerk.): The abolition of serfdom and its impact on rural culture, Guide to the Exhibition Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Revolution and War if Independence of 1848-49 (Budapest-Szentendre, Museum of Hungarian Agriculture-Hungarian Open-Air Museum, 1998.)

demands of the landlords, and protecting the plots used by the peasants from being incorporated into the estates of the landlords. The land used by the landlords themselves were called manorial or seigniorial lands or allodia. Their produce was fully tax-free. As the tax income of the state mostly consisted of taxes paid by peasants working on tenements held in socage, the Vienna Court was at pains to stop the increase of seigniorial duties. The new system of duties to be rendered to the landlords was elaborated by Councellor Festetics Pál upon the queen's request. He defined the concept of the plot and the tenure held in socage (sessio in Latin) as its fundamental unit. This was made necessary by the fact that „the duties of the serfs and the taxes they are to pay have to be adjusted to the size and nature of the plots they work on." Those peasants whose plots (arable land and pasture taken together) did not reach one eighth of the standard tenements were called cotters. The measure of rent and duties differed according to the size of the plots. Plots held in tenure consisted of inner and outer parts. The inner part included the building site, the courtyard, the fann-yard, and the vegetable garden. Its standard size was determined to be approximately six hundred square-fathoms, i.e., a territory necessary for sowing 108.6 litres of seed (the equivalent of two Pozsony gauges). The size of the outer parts, i.e., the arable land and the meadow, differed from county to county. There were three or four (in two counties Urbarial patent ot the village of Csebreid 5