Ipcriob of tbe IRonian ©ccupatioiu 



B.C. 58— A.D. 426. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE BIRTH OF THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM. 



Theee Nationalities, viz., the Briton, tlie Roman, and the 

 Teuton, helped to determine the character of our great English 

 Landed Interest. As we come to deal with the various classes 

 connected with this soil of England, we shall discover customs 

 peculiar to their tenure, their husbandry, their commerce, their 

 tribunals, and even their games, whose origin is closely inter- 

 mixed with ethnical characteristics. This, indeed, endows our 

 folk-lore societies and antiquarian publications with motives 

 a great deal more practical than those of mere curiosit}^ about 

 a dead past. 



Could we but trace each of these nationalities to some dis- 

 tinctly separate stem, there would be far less difficulty in 

 tracking back to its proper origin each peculiarity of our 

 Constitution. But this is in no single instance possible. 

 Modern theorists have produced a mass of inductive evidence 

 of sufficient weight to attract a large school of disciples, who 

 would derive the three peoples just named from some common 

 Indo-Aryan source. That this idea has its opponents goes 

 without saying, but even they limit their objections, to but a 

 moiety of the British race ; though possibly were Mr. Gomme,^ 

 their champion, to extend his researches, he might produce 

 sufficient evidence to shake the orthodox theories with regard 



' G. L. Gomme, Village Communifij, cli. iv. 



