82 History of the English Landed Interest. 



some portionless younger son of an Anglo-Saxon landlord, who 

 penetrated into tlie waste, built dwellings for himself and fol- 

 lowers, and cultivated the surrounding land. First there 

 would be the settlement, which earned for the portion of the 

 waste thus appropriated the term Lsenland ;^ then its conver- 

 sion into a manor, a process which was not complete until two 

 acts of the new overlord had received legal recognition. In 

 the first place, the assumption of landed proprietorship over 

 that part of the people's land henceforth to be known as lord's 

 demesne, had to be confirmed by charter ; and in the second 

 place, the grant of seignorial jurisdiction over waste, common 

 field, demesne land, and people, had to be obtained from the 

 king. ^ Save over the land appropriated to the private use of 

 individuals, no interference with popular rights took place, and 

 thus it is that the term Bocland is rightly confined by Black- 

 stone to the tenemental lands in free soccage. There was, 

 however, a lingering trace of national control over these demesne 

 lands, and rightly so, for they represented a complete surrender 

 both of royal as well as popular claims. Hence we find that the 

 succession to the Bocland is controlled hy the National Statute 

 Book, and entailed, on pain of its reversion into Folcland, strictly 

 amongst the descendants of the original possessor.-^ In con- 

 tradistinction to the Bocland, the rest of the manorial lands 

 were still the people's, even though cultivated b}' their ploughs 

 instead of pastured by their cattle ; hence Blackstone is also 

 right in applying the term Folcland to the lands in villeinage. 

 But objecting, like all the other mediaeval lawyers, to the recog- 

 nition of popular proprietorship, or to any limitation of seig- 

 norial jurisdiction over the waste, he is careful to distinguish 

 between the district to which he applies the term Folcland and 

 that to which he applies the term lord's waste.* 



' Seebohm, Encilhh V/lla;/e Commiinifrj, ed. 4, p. 108. 



* The Witan did not intorfere with the king's prerogative over juris- 

 dictory grants. Vide Mr. H. Adams, Anglo-Saxon Courts of Law, p. 50, 

 in Essays on Anglo-Saxon Laics. 



^ Cap. 41 Leg. Aelf., Essays on Anglo-Saxon Laws ; C. Lodge, Land 

 Laws, p. 72. 



* Dalrymple identifies the Bocland with Thainhind, and the Folcland 

 with Eoveland, a probable supposition, but one which requires some fur- 



