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Indiana University Studies 
natural boundaries. This larger district was divided among 
chiefs and village communities. Village communities were 
made up of families bound together by blood, marriage, and 
ties of neighborhood, who established village communities with 
their dwellings, outbuildings, enclosures, and common-field sys- 
tem of husbandry, consisting of meadow fields assigned to 
freeholders and outlying pastures and woodlands used in com- 
mon. The land assigned to the village communities was in 
turn assigned to each freeholder in amounts of about 120 
acres each (one hide), and was held, the house and its imme- 
diate plot in absolute ownership and the rest subject to the 
common-field method of agriculture. To the chiefs, or magis- 
trates, must have been assigned large independent tracts en- 
tirely independent of the tracts given to village communities. 
In addition to the land thus alloted was a large amount of un- 
appropriated land, which belonged to the tribe or nation, and 
which later came to be regarded as land of the king. This 
latter land was granted out to the churches and great men 
from time to time, and was known as bocland, to distinguish 
it from the rest of the land which was known as folkland. 
Freeholders of folkland had the power of alienation and their 
heirs could not be disinherited. Some sort of dower and cur- 
tesy also attached to folkland. Bookland also usually provided 
that the holder could convey and devise by will. A consider- 
able class of tenants came to settle on different parts of the 
land in the country still unappropriated, without absolute title 
either by allotment or book, but by paying rent to the state. 
They had not more than life estates, and could not convey or 
will, but undoubtedly otherwise held their land as folkland. 
The churches and other holders of bookland granted land for 
temporary use, during the latter part of the Anglo-Saxon 
period, and this was called laenland. The tenant had the 
usufructuary enjoyment of the land rather than ownership. 
Thruout Anglo-Saxon history the large estates kept growing 
in number and size. This was due both to the new grants 
by the king and to the fact that the small estates of the poorer 
freeman were constantly being merged in the great estates of 
the territorial lords. By the close of the Anglo-Saxon period 
the greater part of the country was held in this way. A dis- 
trict then assumed a form closely resembling the manor of 
feudal times. The relation of lord and man developed until 
