Land Tenure and Agriculture. 83 



In another sense the uncultivated lands may be represented 

 as the national property hitherto unappropriated, and the 

 common arable land as that part of it appropriated by sections 

 of the community ; both, however, still retaining their popular 

 characteristics. The reward of national services and the de- 

 frayment of national expenses were uses to which the Fol eland 

 was generally put, hence we find Palgrave defining it as ager 

 fiscalis, and Cabot Lodge ^ as Ager Vectigalis; hence also we see 

 the reason why it was under the special protection of the witan. 

 Totally opposed to lands of this description was the Bocland, 

 which was under private jurisdiction and subject to individual 

 ownership instead of that of the State. Its owners would, 

 however, possess seignorial rights over a larger area of ground 

 comprised by their manors, which, as Cabot Lodge has pointed 

 out, by the laws of Hen. I. resulted in both kinds of lands, 

 viz. private and public, becoming merged under the one name 

 Bocland, though in principle the latter continued to be partly 

 subject to popular rights. 



Our view of early land tenure reduces the question of seig- 

 norial usurpation to the limits of the various manorial demesne 

 lands, and even here it is more than probable that the early 

 times at Avliich this process was brought about, fully justified 

 the step in the eyes of those whose interests were most affected. 

 Whatever way we view the subject there appears very little to 

 justify the opponents of the manorial theory in clamouring for 

 a repeal of all the Enclosure Acts from now up to the date 

 of that greatest of Enclosure Acts — the Statute of Merton.^ 

 It may indeed require something beyond and behind the 

 manorial theory to reconcile what we know of ancient sys- 

 tems of land tenure with what we retain of common rights, 

 and to explain away the discrepancies in the Statute of 

 Quia Emptores. For such reasons it is advantageous that Mr. 

 Scrutton has been able to disconnect the manorial nexus by 

 pointing out instances where rights of common exist apart 



ther corroboration tliaa is aiforded by early records. Vide Dalrymple. 

 tiist. of Introduction of Feudal System. 



* Essays on Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 73. 



" 20 Henry III. 



