io ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



and other retainers who took up small holdings, either 

 as holders of definite plots of land or as sharers in the 

 common fields and various rights ; and (2) a class of 

 estate-holders, either bishops or other dignitaries of the 

 Church, or eorls or thegns soldier-squires ; these men 

 had the control over the estates, as a rule large, lying 

 either in one block or in scattered areas. These estate- 

 holders not only possessed the rulers' rights of collecting 

 tribute, administering justice, supervising markets and 

 so forth, but they also in some cases took up land for 

 their own personal use, so securing for themselves a home 

 farm, the 'inland' as it was called, where they built barns 

 and halls. From these centres they exercised control 

 over the district, giving to the peasant farmers some 

 measure of protection and support, and drawing from 

 them in return something of the nature of a rent or 

 tribute in food or military or other services. Though 

 private property in land in the modern sense could 

 hardly be said to have existed in those days, one can 

 divide the land titles, so ar as they did exist, into 

 two classes, the first based in origin on settlement 

 confirmed by custom, and the second based on royal 

 grant. This latter was called ' bok ' or book land. 



It is now possible to form some idea of the character 

 of rural society and the nature of the village community, 

 as it existed in the middle of the Anglo- 

 Saxon period, before it had been modified 

 through the growth of militarism and the 

 increase of taxation. Society was at that time beginning 

 to adjust itself into the form of a pyramid, with the 

 workers on the soil at the bottom and the king at 

 the top ; between were the eorls and thegns, bishops 

 and other Church dignitaries, various steps in the 



