66 History of the English Landed Interest. 



so extensive and the population so sparse as to leave a large 

 area of useless waste even after all the demands of the inhabi- 

 tants had been satisfied. Such, however, was the case when 

 the invaders first settled on English soil, and so the existence 

 of Folcland demonstrates. "When each district came to be 

 parcelled out by the Bretwalda amongst the various claimants, 

 " How little can you do with ? " was less the question than, 

 " How much ? " The men who had come all this way across 

 the seas were not so much the possessors of a large personalty 

 in flocks and herds as leaders of bands of warriors. The over- 

 lord of each district was therefore less the owner of lands than 

 the governor of a province. He was the magistrate of the 

 pagus, and whatever existed of the old Mark system would 

 probably be found in the grouping of his subjects into families, 

 in the administration of the laws, and in the economy observed 

 over the husbandry, Jurisdictory rights, however, would not 

 of themselves be sufficiently lucrative to afford their proprietor 

 a livelihood. He would require something more tangible, such 

 as a lion's share in the soil of his territory, and he was power- 

 ful enough to obtain what he wanted. This, we think, is the 

 origin of the demesne land. Must we not expect then, for some 

 time after the Teutonic invasion, to find as we progress in 

 history fewer traces of village communal customs and more of 

 those institutions peculiar to the manorial system ? There will 

 be fewer hides in the common pasturage and more in the lord's 

 demesne, fewer appeals to the community's tribunals and more 

 to the lord's. It were folly to expect events to develop other- 

 wise without such artificial and restrictive legislation as was 

 resorted to by the Germans of Caesar. As well might we seek 

 to confine by law the annual profits of the trader to that sum 

 which represents those of the least enterprising of his class, as 

 to restrict a community to the equal subdivision of its lands. 

 It is hard to believe that any artificial expedient (even the 

 occupation of the Marklands in turns) would have restrained 

 the now semi-civilised Anglo-Saxon from violating village 

 communal laws. For directly a man grows sufficiently 

 educated to appreciate the uses of agriculture, the value of 

 the waste as common pasturage becomes diminished in his 



