The Mark System. 41 



a lialf-way halting house between the nomadic instincts of his 

 Scythian father when he wandered into Europe, and those of 

 his German descendant in the days of the Othos. 



But if we come to exapiine in detail the accounts of both 

 Latin authors we shall soon see that the Teutonic nature had 

 greatly changed during the lapse of those 150 years between 

 the dates of the two histories. 



The Teuton of Csesar enjoyed a communal form of land 

 tenure. The Teuton of Tacitus divided his lands according to 

 social status. The chief of Csesar was a j)Yhnus inter pares ; 

 the chief of Tacitus was closely akin to the later lord of the 

 manor. 



Turning back to the passage quoted already, we find a fresh 

 interpretation of " occupantur " such as Columella would have 

 intended to convey when he used the word. The land was 

 '"''put to account " by placing slaves upon it.^ Here then in 

 chapters xxv. and xxvi. we have three classes — the lord, the 

 freeholder, and the serf, answering in all essential features to 

 those of that allodialist land tenure which we shall afterwards 

 find existing in England. 



But this is not the Mark system of Von Maurer, Kemble, 

 and other theorists.^ Let us therefore briefly describe their 

 views of this famous economy. 



When a nomadic tribe took to settling and cultivating land 

 with a view to permanent habitation, its component parts be- 

 came split up into families and groups of families (the vici of 

 Tacitus), each of which erected their own homesteads on 

 unowned wastes. The heads formed themselves into a common 

 council, which selected some favoured spot as meadow ground 

 and apportioned to each unit a share in the crop of the com- 

 munity. After its removal by individual owners the fences 

 or divisions were obliterated until the grass began to grow 

 again the succeeding year, and the cattle of the community 

 fed " horn with horn " on the whole area. The various home- 

 steads grouped together formed the village, and the common 



^ Fustel de Coulanges, Origin of Property in Land, Engl. Trans., p. 10. 

 2 Cf. Gr. L. von Manrer, Einleitung zur Gesch. d. Mark-Hof Dorf- 

 u. Stadtverfassung, and Kemble, Anglo-Saxons. 



