68 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Some allowance must also unquestionably be made for the 
differing origins of the first immigrants. Not one Saxon kingdom 
only, nor one Teutonic race, was represented among the earlier 
Teutonic settlers in Devon. 
Interesting as the subject is, we are hardly in a position to say 
how far the peculiar Saxon institutions were planted in this county. 
There has not yet been found in Devon any certain trace of the 
Teutonic mark, 1 which indeed would have survived, if at all, only 
in modified form by the time Devon was absorbed into Wessex. 
Nor is the existence of the family group much clearer. We have 
personal, individual, settlements in plenty, and some few traces of 
associative effort ; but we do not find, nor can we expect to find, 
precisely the same polity as is presented by the shires and king- 
doms first settled by the Saxons, which was complete of its kind. 
Beyond this we see much more clearly. The constitution of 
Devon is purely Saxon — from village to shire ; each of its hundreds 
has a Saxon name j each of its ancient municipalities originated in 
a Saxon community; and in some even of its towns, such as Tavi- 
stock and Ashburton, the elder form of government is still easily 
distinguishable in the continued existence of the port-reeve, or 
port-gerefa of the original free township, elected by the freeholders 
as representatives of the estates of the original settlers. 2 And 
though we cannot trace the mark, we find abundant evidence of 
early personal connection with the land in the alod, "the hereditary 
estate derived from primitive occupation," 3 to which most of our 
" worthys " and " hams," and not a few of our " tuns," must have 
belonged. On the other hand, a wide-spread joint or village owner- 
ship is attested by the great breadths of common land which, not- 
withstanding all encroachments, have descended to our own day. 
And as the continued severance of Dartmoor bears witness also to 
* " The general name of the mark is given to the territory which is held by 
the community, the absolute ownership of which resides in the community 
itself, or in the tribe or nation of which the community forms a part." 
(Stubbs's Constitutional History, vol. i. p. 49.) At first the woods and pas- 
tures of the mark were undivided, and used equally; when apportionment 
arose, meadow and arable land were divided in equal shares, with a shifting 
from year to year of the portion occupied by each member of the mark. In 
all the possessions of the mark or village each man had his equal or propor- 
tionate share. 
2 Stttbbb, Op. cit. p. 53. 3 Ibid. p. 93. 
