Seio^norial Powers. 67 



v> 



eyes. He decides to reclaim it under the plough ; and the 

 ground, mellowed by his labours and green with sprouting corn, 

 awakes in him the sense of proprietorship. 



Thus, in the case of the Anglo-Saxon, from the retention of 

 his share of the common pasturage ground beyond the usual 

 period, to its cultivation, thence to its possession and enclosure, 

 and so on to a still further claim on the adjoining waste, are but 

 the usual steps to absolute possession which commend them- 

 selves to any masterful and progressive mind. There is surely 

 no reason to imagine that the rest of the community objected 

 to this appropriation of what was everybody's but not any- 

 body's property. Possibly some sort of negative permission 

 was obtained for each act of encroachment by a chief who had 

 a claim on the community's gratitude as a protector at a period 

 when, by the solemn act of " commendation," small landed 

 proprietors were constantly resorting to protectors. 



Somehow or other, therefore, the largest landowner became 

 the lord of the community, and the community became laeti, 

 who possessed much the same common rights as before over 

 at any rate a larger portion of the woodland and grassland, 

 though parts were no longer known under the- the old term 

 " Folcland," but either terra regis or lord's waste. ^ Pi'obably, 

 too, they tilled their allotments in much the same fashion, 

 using in turns the lord's farm implements instead of their own. 

 Only when a cow strayed, or a stream got dammed up, or a 

 road required attention, or somebody's swine got confused with 

 somebody else's, it was to the lord's court they had to go to 

 obtain attention and justice. This we venture to think is the 

 origin of the allodialist, perhaps it also explains the division 

 of the land into counties and hundreds, each with its peculiar 

 court of justice. 



Many an historian has puzzled his brains for an explanation 

 why England was unequally subdivided into counties as big 

 as Yorkshire and so small as Rutland ; what, too, was the 

 origin of the Wapentake, the Lathe, and the Rape, the 

 Trithings and Ridings of Yorkshire, and the three shires into 



^ We shall discuss this branch of our subject further in the ensuing 

 chapter. 



