It may be asked whether 'folkland' was not extra-manorial.

Now in one sense all that belonged to the ancient demesne of the Crown was folkland and extra-manorial. All estates with the villages and towns upon them, which had no manorial lord but the king, [p167] were in the demesne of the Crown, as also were the royal forests.

Formerly, while there were many petty kings in England, and before the kingship had attained its unity and its full growth, i.e. before it had, as we are told by historians, absorbed in itself exclusively the sole representation of the nation, the term folkland was apparently applied to all that was afterwards included in the royal demesne. All that had not become the boc-land or private property either of members of the royal house or of a monastery or of a private person was still folkland. And it would appear that the kings had originally no power to alienate this folkland without the consent of the great men of their witan.

But inasmuch as the royal demesne or folkland included an endless number of manors as well as forest, it cannot properly be said that it was necessarily extra-manorial. More correctly it was in the manor of the king. The king was its manorial lord, and the geburs and cottiers upon it were geneats or villani of the king. The Tidenham and Hysseburne manors were both of them manors of the royal demesne until they were granted by charter to their new monastic owners.

Now, it is clear that in the course of time, after that in a similar way grant after grant had been made of 'ham' after 'ham,' with its little territory—its ager or agellus, or agellulus, as the ecclesiastical writers were wont to describe it in the charters—to the king's thanes or to monasteries, as boc-land or private estate, the number of 'hams' still remaining folkland would grow less and less. [p168]

In the meantime the royal forests were managed by royal foresters under separate laws and regulations of great severity, whilst the royal hams or manors were put under the management of a resident steward, præpositus or villicus—in Saxon 'tun-gerefa,'—or were let out for life as lænland to neighbouring great men or their sons, or to thanes in the royal service.

This granting of life-leases of folkland or hams on the royal demesne seems to have been a usual mode of rewarding special military services, and Bede bitterly complained that the profuse and illegitimate grants which were wheedled out of the king for pretended monastic purposes had already in his time seriously weakened the king's power of using the royal estates legitimately as a means of keeping up his army and maintaining the national defences.195 To be able to provide some adequate maintenance for the thanes, on whose services he relied, was a king's necessity; for well might King Alfred enforce the truth of the philosophy of his favourite Boethius by exclaiming that every one may know how 'full miserable and full unmighty' kings must be who cannot count upon the support of their thanes.196

But from the nature of the case it was inevitable that the area of folkland or royal demesne must constantly be lessened as each succeeding grant increased the area of the boc-land. In other words, to use the later phrase, the tendency was not only for new [p169] manors to be created out of the royal forests and wastes, but also for more and more of the royal manors to pass from the royal demesne into private hands.

Now there is a remarkable passage in one of King Alfred's treatises197 which incidentally throws some light upon this process, and explains the way in which new manors may have been created. He describes how the forest or a great wood provided every [p170] requisite of building, shafts and handles for tools, bay timbers and bolt timbers for house-building, fair rods (gerda) with which many a house (hus) may be constructed, and many a fair tun timbered, wherein men may dwell permanently in peace and quiet, summer and winter, which, writes the king with a sigh, 'is more than I have yet done!' There was, he said, an eternal 'ham' above, but He that had promised it through the holy fathers might in the meantime make him, so long as he was in this world, to dwell softly in a log-hut on lænland ('lænan stoclif' 198), waiting patiently for his eternal inheritance. So we wonder not, he continued, that men should work in timber-felling and in carrying and in building,199 for a man hopes that if he has built a cottage on lænland of his lord, with his lord's help, he may be allowed to lie there awhile, and hunt and fowl and fish, and occupy the læn as he likes on sea and land, until through his lord's grace he may perhaps some day obtain boc-land and permanent inheritance. Then finally he completes his parable by reverting once more to the contrast between 'thissa lænena stoclife' and 'thara ecena hama'—between the log hut on lænland and the permanent freehold 'ham' on the boc-land, or hereditary manorial estate.

It is true that in this passage King Alfred does not suggest distinctly that the lord would make the actual holding of lænland into boc-land, thus converting a clearing in his forest into a new manor for his thane; but, on the other hand, there was a good reason [p171] for this omission, seeing that such a suggestion would have just overreached the point of his parable.

Be this as it may, the vivid little glimpse we get into the modus operandi of the possible growth of a Saxon manorial estate, out of folkland granted first as lænland, and then as boc-land, or out of the woods or waste of an ealdorman's domain, may well be made use of to illustrate the matter in hand.

The typical importance in so many ways of the gyrd, or rod, or virga in the origin and growth of the Saxon 'tun' or 'ham' is worth at least a moment's notice.

The typical site for a new settlement was a clearing in a wood or forest, because of the 'fair rods' which there abound. The clearing was measured out by rods. An allusion to this occurs in Notker's paraphrase of Psa. lxxviii. 55—'He cast out the heathen before them, and divided them an inheritance by line.' The Vulgate which Notker had before him was 'Et sorte divisit eis terram in funiculo distributionis;' and he translated the last clause thus—'teilta er daz lant mit mazseile,'—to which he added, 'also man nu tuot mit RUOTO,' as they now do it with rods, i.e. at St. Gall in the tenth or eleventh century.200

So in England the typical holding in the cleared land of the open fields was called yard-land, or in earlier Saxon a gyrd landes, or in Latin a virgata terræ; yard, gyrd, and virga all meaning rod, and all meaning also in a secondary sense a yard measure. The holdings in the open fields were of yarded or [p172] rooded land—land measured out with a rod into acres four rods wide, each rod in width being therefore a rood, as we have seen.

Again, the whole homestead was called a tun or a worth, because it was tyned or girded with a wattled fence of gyrds or rods. And so, too, in the Gothic of Ulfilas the homestead was a 'gard.' So that in the evident connexion of these words we seem to get confirmation of the hint given by King Alfred of the process of the growth of new manors.

The young thane, with his lord's permission, makes a clearing in a forest, building his log hut and then other log huts for his servants. At first it is forest game on which he lives. By-and-by the cluster of huts becomes a little hamlet of homesteads. He provides his servants with their outfits of oxen, and they become his geburs. The cleared land is measured out by rods into acres. The acres ploughed by the common plough are allotted in rotation to the yard-lands. A new hamlet has grown up in the royal forest, or in the outlying woods of an old ham or manor. In the meantime the king perhaps rewards his industrious thane, who has made the clearing in his forest, with a grant of the estate with the village upon it, as his boc-land for ever, and it becomes a manor, or the lord of the old manor of which it is a hamlet grants to him the inheritance, and the hamlet becomes a subject manor held of the higher lord.

So we seem now to see clearly how new tuns and hams or manors were always growing up century after century, on the royal demesne and on private estates or manors, as in a former chapter it became [p173] clear incidentally how new geburs with fresh yard-lands could be added to the village community, and the strips which made up the yard-lands intermixed with those of their neighbours in the village fields.

X. THE LAWS OF KING ETHELBERT—THERE WERE MANORS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY.

We have seen that not only the general description of serfdom contained in the 'Rectitudines,' but also the two examples we have been able to examine of serfdom upon particular manors in Saxon times, testify clearly to the existence of a serfdom upon Saxon manors as complete and onerous as the later serfdom upon Norman manors. And we have seen that, connecting this evidence with that of the laws of King Ine, the proof is clear of the existence of manors and serfdom in the seventh century, i.e. 400 years before the Norman Conquest. There remains to be quoted the still earlier though scanty evidence of the laws of King Ethelbert, A.D. 597–616; which, if genuine, bring us back to the date of the mission of St. Augustine to England.

The evidence of these laws is accidental and indirect, but taken in connexion with that already considered, it seems to show conclusively that the 'hams' and 'tuns' of that early period were already manors. Upon one point at least it is clear. It goes so far as to indicate that they were in the ownership of individuals, and not of free village communities.

[p174] The following passages occur:—

If there be any doubt as to the manorial character of these 'hams' and 'tuns,' it lies not in the point of the single ownership of them, but in other points, whether they were worked and tilled by the owners' slaves, or by a village community in serfdom.

The only classes of tenants which are mentioned in the laws of King Ethelbert are the three grades of læts referred to in the following passage:

The word læt is of doubtful meaning in this passage. It might have reference to the Roman læti, or people of conquered tribes deported into Roman provinces at the end of a war; or it might refer to the liti or lidi—the servile tenants mentioned in so many of the early Continental codes. We are not yet in a position to decide. But in any case these læts of King Ethelbert's laws were clearly of a semi-servile class here in Kent, as were the lidi in Frankish Gaul,201 for their 'wergild' was distinctly less than that of the Kentish freemen.202 Whether they were a [p175] different class from the geburs or villani, or identical with them, it is not easy to decide.

XI. RESULT OF THE SAXON EVIDENCE.

The evidence of the earliest Saxon or Jutish laws thus leaves us with a strong presumption, if not actual certainty, that the Saxon ham or tun was the estate of a lord, and not of a free village community, and that it was so when the laws of the Kentish men were first codified a few years after the mission of St. Augustine.

It becomes, therefore, all but impossible that the manorial character of English hams and tuns can have had an ecclesiastical origin. The codification of the laws was possibly indeed the direct result of ecclesiastical influence no less than in the case of the Alamannic, and Bavarian, and Visigothic, and Burgundian, and Lombardic codes. In all these cases the codification partook, to some extent, of the character of a compact between the king and the Church. Room had to be made, so to speak, for the new ecclesiastical authority. A recognised status and protection had to be given to the Church for the first time, and this introduction of a new element into national arrangements was perhaps in some cases the occasion of the codification. This may be so; but at the same time it is impossible that a new system of land tenure can have been suddenly introduced with the new [p176] religion. The property granted to the Church from the first was already manorial. A ham or a tun could not be granted to the Church by the king, or an earl, unless it already existed as a manorial estate. The monasteries became, by the grants which now were showered down upon them, lords of manors which were already existing estates, or they could not have been transferred.

Further, looking within the manor, whether on the royal demesne or in private hands, it seems to be clear that as far back as the evidence extends, i.e. the time of King Ine, the holdings—the yard-lands—were held in villenage, and were bundles of a recognised number of acre or half-acre strips in the open field, handed down from one generation to another in single succession without alteration.

Now let it be fully understood what is involved in this indivisible character of the holding, in its devolution from one holder to another without division among heirs. We have seen that the theory was that as the land and homestead, and also the setene, or outfit, were provided by the lord, they returned to the lord on the death of the holder. The lord granted the holding afresh, most often, no doubt, to the eldest son or nearest relation of the landholder on his payment of an ox or other relief in recognition of the servile nature of the tenure, and thus a custom of primogeniture, no doubt, grew up, which, in the course of generations—how early we do not know—being sanctioned by custom, could not be departed from by the lord. The very possibility of this permanent succession, generation after generation, of a single holder to the indivisible bundle of strips [p177] called a yard-land or virgate, thus seems to have implied the servile nature of the holding. The lord put in his servant as tenant of the yard-land, and put in a successor when the previous one died. This seems to be the theory of it. It was probably precisely the same course of things which ultimately produced primogeniture in the holding of whole manors. The king put in a thane or servant of his (sometimes called the 'king's geneat'), or a monastery put in a steward or villicus to manage a manor. When he died his son may have naturally succeeded to the office or service, until by long custom the office became hereditary, and a succession or inheritance by primogeniture under feudal law was the result. The benefice, or læn, or office was probably not at first generally hereditary; though of course there were many cases of the creation of estates of inheritance, or boc-land, by direct grant of the king. As we have seen from the passage quoted from Bede, the læn of an estate for life was the recognised way in which the king's thanes were rewarded for their services.

Thus it seems that in the very nature of things the permanent equality of the holdings in yard-lands (or double, or half yard-lands), on a manor, was a proof that the tenure was servile, and that the community was not a free village community. For imagine a free village community taking equal lots, and holding these lots, as land of inheritance, by allodial tenure, and with (what seems to have been the universal custom of Teutonic nations as regards land of inheritance) equal division among heirs, how could the equality be possibly maintained? One holder of a yard-land would have seven sons, and another two, and another [p178] one. How could equality be maintained generation after generation? What could prevent the multiplication of intricate subdivisions among heirs, breaking up the yard-lands into smaller bundles of all imaginable sizes? Even if a certain equality could be restored, which is very unlikely, at intervals, by a re-division, which should reverse the inequality produced by the rule of inheritance, what would become of the yard-lands? How could the contents of the yard-land remain the same on the same estate for hundreds of years, notwithstanding the increase in the number of sharers in the land of the free village community?

We may take it, then, as inherently certain that the system of yard-lands is a system involving in its continuance a servile origin. The community of holders of yard-lands we may regard as a community of servile tenants, without any strict rights of inheritance—in theory tenants at the will of their lord, becoming by custom adscripti glebæ, and therefore tenants for life, and by still longer custom gaining a right of single undivided succession by primogeniture, or something very much like it.

Now we know that the holdings were yard-lands and the holders geburs, rendering the customary gafol and week-work to their lords, in the time of King Ine, if we may trust the genuineness of his 'laws.' There was but an interval of 100 years between Ine and Ethelbert; whilst Ine lived as near to the first conquest of large portions of the middle districts of England as Ethelbert did to the conquest of Kent.

The laws of Ethelbert, taken in connexion with the subsequent laws of Ine, and the later actual [p179] instances of Saxon manors which have been examined, form a connected chain, and bring back the links of the evidence of the manorial character of Saxon estates to the very century in which the greater part of the West Saxon conquests took place. The existence of earl's and king's and men's hams and tuns in the year of the codification of the Kentish laws, A.D. 602 or thereabouts, means their existence as a manorial type of estate in the sixth century; and with the exception of the southern districts, the West Saxon conquests were not made till late in the sixth century. Surely there is too short an interval left unaccounted for to allow of great economic changes—to admit of the degeneracy of an original free village community if a widely spread institution, into a community in serfdom. So that the evidence strongly points to the hams and tuns having been manorial in their type from the first conquest. In other words, so far as this evidence goes, the Saxons seem either to have introduced the manorial system into England themselves, founding hams and tuns on the manorial type, or to have found them already existing on their arrival in Britain. There seems no room for the theory that the Saxons introduced everywhere free village communities on the system of the German 'mark,' which afterwards sank into serfdom under manorial lords.

But before we can be in a position to understand what probably happened we must turn our attention to those portions of Britain which were not manorial, and where village communities did not generally exist. They form an integral part of our present England, and English economic history has to do with the [p180] economic growth of the whole people. It cannot, therefore, confine itself to facts relating to one element only of the nation, and to one set of influences, merely because they became in the long run the paramount and overruling ones. And, moreover, the history of the manorial system itself cannot be properly understood without an understanding also of the parallel, and perhaps older, tribal system, which in the course of many centuries it was destined in some districts to overrule and supplant; in others, after centuries of effort, to fail in supplanting.