78 History of the English Landed Interest. 



few, of these centres of liuman life, together with an enormous, 

 impenetrable, roadless tract of the waste, constituted the terri- 

 tories of some pett}' Anglo-Saxon chieftain. Save for purposes 

 of the chase, no one would care to dive far into such cheerless 

 solitudes, resembling more than anything else the Australian 

 bush, but, in days prior to the introduction of the compass, even 

 more without hope of ultimate egress for the lost traveller. 



Is it then at all likely that any lord, however arbitrary and 

 exacting, would care to lay claim to the proprietary rights of 

 such useless wildernesses ? "Who could, estimate the pannage 

 dues of the few swine hidden in their primeval depths ? or the 

 quantity of estovers taken ? The scanty wants of some dozen 

 or so families in building and firing materials would but help 

 to clear ground for future agriculture. The few live stock of 

 the village would improve rather than spoil its coarse herbage ; 

 and the requirements of twenty times as large a population in 

 food and fuel would result in no appreciable difference to either 

 its stores of game and fish, or its supply of timber and turf. 

 On the other hand, the assumption of proprietary rights by 

 the lord over what was universally recognised as people's 

 ground, so long as it in no way interfered with their few 

 wants in estovers, piscary, turbary, and the like, would not 

 excite popular opposition. 



Times were bad, famines frequent ; and he who made two 

 ears of com grow where one formerly existed, was more of a 

 public benefactor then than he has ever been since. The lord's 

 capital was as much needed for successful agriculture as the 

 people's labour. Even when the community performed their 

 tillage operations as tenants, it was from the lord's houses, 

 implements, and stock that their outfit came. ^ 



"VVe can imagine a time when the cultivated area of the 

 township would not have sufficed to employ all the able and 

 willing labour of the community. A mutual arrangement 



densely populated. Thus Norfolk contahxed 28,3G5, and Suffolk, 22,093. 

 The whole of England numbered 300,785. I cannot agree with Mr. Sharon 

 Turner's view, in estimating tliese numbers as referring to families, and 

 multiplying them by five. Aiifjlo-Saxuns, bk. viii., vol. iii., p. 256. 

 ^ Seebohm, ojj. cit., p. 133. 



