76 History of the English Landed Interest, 



the gradually mcreasing area wliicli came to be known as 

 king's demesne ; and it has been suggested that the Folcland 

 must have been absorbed altogether by these two processes — 

 an idea which is the more plausible, when there is but one 

 allusion to this portion of the country as Folcland in all the 

 Anglo-Saxon laws.^ A large area of ground in the manorial 

 system was known as the lord's demesne, which, with 

 that of the king, made up the sum of British soil entirely 

 under individual ownership. The bulk, however, of the land 

 remained Folcland, as we shall show later on. Now it is 

 important to observe that the demesne lands (or as they were 

 called at this early period, the thane's inlands), were not 

 wholly composed of the separate cultivated district round the 

 lord's dwelling-house, but were supplemented by a few acre 

 plots scattered over the arable fields of the community. These 

 the lord farmed under the same peculiar restrictions of hus- 

 bandry which we shall shortly show were in force on the 

 people's lands. Not only would the rotation of cropping be 

 the same, but their preparation for seed and harvest operations 

 identical ; that is to say, they would have been performed by 

 the community's labour and the lord's capital, or rather, what 

 was equivalent in these times to capital, the lord's goods and 

 chattels. 



Either these separated portions of the demesnes represent 

 lands seized by the lord from individuals as a set-off against 

 neglected boon or predial services, or more likely they were 

 the original possessions of the primus inter parefi^ which, on his 

 conversion into the overlord, remained in his powerful grasp. 



Another large area of the district was known as the lord's 

 waste, over which the people possessed common rights, such 

 as those of housebote, cartbote, ploughbote, fyrebote, etc. 

 Another area was known as the common arable land of the 

 manor, and here again the people's rights are clearly distin- 

 guishable. For though the lord gave evidence of his pro- 

 prietary rights by claiming his qirkl pro quo over each man's 

 tenancy, he could not alter the famous Trinity system of culti- 



' Leg. Aed. sen., c. 2. "Athor otlithe on boclande, oththe on folc- 

 lando." 



