Seigiiorial Powers. 6 



o 



comprising the allodialists, whose lands were distributed 

 amongst the latter in exchange for their mihtary services.^ 

 The farmers, or to use their Saxon appellation, ceorls, were also 

 socially divided into the yeomen, who paid rents in kind, and 

 socmen, who performed prsedial services for the lands of the 

 thanes which they cultivated. The division of the remaining 

 class into prsedial and household bondmen completes the six 

 distinctive heads under which every soul, except the king and 

 the lower priesthood, in Anglo-Saxon England was compre- 

 hended. 



By a system of local government the whole country was 

 parcelled out into counties, hundreds, and tithings, and over 

 these were appointed respectively the vice-comites, prepositi, 

 hundredorum, and tithing men, each of whom presided over 

 his own peculiar court of justice. 



Thus briefly have we traced the growth of the monarchy 

 out of the scattered and separate territories won in warfare 

 by the original Saxon chieftains. 



It is now necessary to study in detail the successive processes 

 whereby the soil of this country came under seignorial juris- 

 diction. 



Bearing in mind what has been said in the former chapter 

 on the natural tendency of most European peoples to pass 

 through the successive stages of family, gens, tribe, and State 

 economies, we propose now to adapt the same principles to the 

 nation under discussion. 



When historical data first give us a glimpse of the Anglo- 

 Saxon constitution we find the machinery of government divided 

 between the public courts, such as those of the Witangemote, 

 the Sheriff's Tourm, the Wapentake and the Tithing, and the 

 private courts, such as those of the King's Thane and Halmote. 

 Great difficulties have been met with in separating out the 

 business that would be transacted in the former from that of 

 the latter, since both jurisdictions frequently embraced the 

 same area of land. 



^ Sharon Turner divides the nobles into ethelings, earldormen, eorls, 

 and King's Thanes, vol. iii., ch. vii., Hist, of Angl.-Sax. We shall develop 

 this subject later on. 



