So History of the English Landed Interest. 



appropriated soil as that wliicli his prototype, the Roman 

 " possessor," had substantiated before so judicial a political 

 opponent as Tiberius Gracchus. 



It would appear then, after all, as though there had been 

 very little class contest ; the lord, on the one hand, probably 

 taking by a gradual and piecemeal process all he would require, 

 and the people tranquilly ceding these matters as immaterial, 

 so long as their necessary requirements in the waste and com- 

 mon field were reserved. 



We are not without evidence that what has been thus briefly 

 sketched represents the true state of the case ; but we must not 

 rely upon that afforded by mediseval lawyers in order to recon- 

 cile the altered views of Norman landownership with the 

 ancient seignorial rights of the Anglo-Saxon gentry. The 

 only trustworthy evidence is that contained in the scant 

 allusions of the Anglo-Saxon statute book,^ and charters to 

 Lcenland, Folcland, and Bocland ; but we must make sure of 

 the construction originally intended for such terms by those 

 who used them. 



Blackstone, for example, merely alludes to the extra-mano- 

 rial soil as lord's waste, and distinguishes between what of 

 the manorial lands were held in free socage as Bocland, and 

 what were held in villeinage as Folcland. ^ It was convenient 

 for those connected with the legal profession throughout the 

 feudal era to ignore any earlier history of the waste than that 

 which started from the Statutes of Merton and II. Westminster. 

 Mr. Seebohm bases an interesting description of Anglo-Saxon 

 land tenure on similarly false premisses. He considers that all 

 the soil of England, originally Folcland, became at the time 

 when a monarchical economy was introduced, the king's 

 demesnes. Now where we take exception to Mr. Seebohm's 

 account is, in the expression king's demesne, which we would 

 replace by some term signifying royal jurisdictory rights. If 

 we exclude the small area of land known as the crown demesnes, 

 the sovereign's prerogative over the English soil, like the seig- 

 norial prerogative over the manor, did not extend beyond certain 



* Comp. Leg. Aelf., c. 37 ; Leg. Ead., c. 2. 



- Blackstone, Comvi., bk. ii., ch. 2, p. 90. 



