42 History of the English Landed Interest. 



pasturage ground was surrounded by an undefined boundary, 

 neither divided nor fenced, of woodland and waste. This was 

 technically termed the Mark, a word which still survives in 

 Scotland to define the boundaries or marches of the various 

 estates, and which is the derivation of the name by which the 

 province " Mercia " was distinguished. 



As soon as these communities acquired further agricultural 

 knowledge they began to till a portion of their territory, and 

 since this required the expenditure of labour and capital it 

 escaped the annual reallotment customary over the hay 

 grounds. The head of each family formed a political unit of 

 the village assembly. Each village or vicus had its head man 

 or princeps, a primus inter pares, and each group of villages 

 formed the district termed Pagus by Tacitus, and Wapentake 

 or Hundred by Anglo-Saxon historians. The old idea that 

 each Hundred sent up a representative to some National 

 Assembly has been exploded. 



Each individual of the vicus within the doors of his habita- 

 tion was a veritable overlord, possessing the judicial powers 

 over his family and slaves which extended to life and death. 

 "Without those doors he sank to the dull level of a common 

 mediocrity. As a unit of the Mark Society he was chained 

 down by laws and hedged around by customs which must 

 have been immensely galling to a man of genius or ambition. 

 Each member of the Mark had his equal arable lots in each 

 of the three divisions of the plough-land. Every one consigned 

 his live-stock to the care of the common herdsman on the 

 waste or cut his firewood and turf under the supervision of 

 the Communal Officer : no one had more winter corn, or spring 

 corn, or fallow ground than another in the three divisions of 

 tlie arable Mark ; everybody sowed his seed and reaped his 

 harvest at the same time, and all drove their flocks and herds 

 on the same day to nibble the herbage of the stubbles and 

 fallows.^ 



Such is the Mark System of the theorists, which, if it were 

 to stand alone on the evidences afforded by Coesar and Tacitus, 

 would have but a flimsy foundation in fact. 



' Sir E. Morier, Agrarian Legislation (Cobclen Club Essaj's). 



