DERIVED FROM THE ROMANS.

37

A study of the distribution of places terminating in -ing, -ingen, leads to interesting conclusions'. These places are usually supposed to be the original free settlements of families or clans, -ing being a patronymic. But such a suffix would seem primarily to imply settlement. Before a place can be called after people, the people must live there with some regularity. In England the -ings occur with the greatest frequency in the district called the Saxon shore, in which also Mr Elton has found the Jüngsten-Recht surviving. Similarly, on the Continent the succession of the youngest son to the homestead and the -ings are found together. And the "three-field" system is found in the same parts of the Continent, and in the South-east of Britain, as distinguished from the North-west and West.

2

Now Professor Wilhelm Arnold is of opinion that the suffix -ing, -ingen invariably denotes an Alamannic settlement. And further, a striking resemblance, amounting in many cases to identity, exists between these English and German -ings or socalled "personal names:" of such names in Picardy 80 per cent. are found in a slightly altered form in England.

From these facts Mr Seebohm reaches the main position of his work3, that the English "three-field" manorial community is due to tribal households of Alamannic Germans, settled in South-east Britain by their Roman rulers, and using the aboriginal inhabitants as serfs to till their land. These Alamannic tribal households are supposed to have either usurped the lordship of existing Roman villas, or to have taken the Roman villa in some respects as the type of their settlements. Local investigations in the neighbourhood of Hitchin show many instances of historical continuity between the Roman villa and the modern village, suggesting that the Saxon settlers occupied and tilled the localities they found already under cultivation. The mediaeval serf would then derive his origin from the Roman slave, the Roman colonus, and the German tribe-slave or laet.

The evidence that these settlements of tribal households

1 Seebohm, p. 347.

2 Ansiedelungen und Wanderungen

155 et seq. Seebohm, p. 360.

3 Seebohm, p. 359.

Deutsche Stämme.

Marburg, 1881, pp.

38

MR SEEBOHM'S RESULTS.

were manors is very slight, though such a state of things would not be impossible. Mr Seebohm, while admitting the "precarious nature" of his suggestion, urges that the evidence to support the theory of settlement by free village communities is equally insufficient. In answer to this it can only be said that the latter is more in accord with what is known of the Teutonic family and its institutions.

Mr Seebohm states as the results of his investigation: a "one-field" system of agriculture, a step more advanced than the simplest form of tillage, existing in South-east Britain when the Romans landed;-a three-field system of rotatory crops, introduced during the Roman occupation, probably by Alamannic settlements under Roman authority;-this system carried out by the settlers by means of a manorial community in which they were the lords, and the conquered population the labourers and serfs; the adoption by the North German invaders of the three-field manorial system, which they found in use on their landing.

If this hypothesis be well founded, it obviously effects a great change in our views of English institutions. For I understand Mr Seebohm to assert the entire absence of Marks, or settlements by free village communities, except in so far as those cases where tribal households are the lords of a manor come under such a title. The liberi tenentes he explains to be those who till the demesne land of the lord, as tenants by gafol or rent of laen land, but not owing work or servile

services.

The chief difficulty in Mr Seebohm's way is the very scanty traces of any such South German settlements, or military colonies of South German race, as he contends for1. The Littus Saxonicum is undoubtedly the shore exposed to Saxon ravages, and not the shore colonised by Saxons. The remarkable similarity of continental and English place-names and the presence of the marks of Alamannic settlements as in-, vestigated by Arnold are facts entitled to some weight. The Bishop of Chester, writing in 1875, before the latest German

1 Stubbs, 1. 59, 63, note; Freeman, Norman Conquest, 1. 11.

investigations, considered the theory "not improbable, but resting on very scanty evidence:" and this evidence has certainly now been strengthened.

Further, there are very slight proofs of the existence of manors on any large scale before A.D. 900: the expressions in the Laws of Ina concerning ceorls with a meadow in common, and in the Laws of Ethelbert concerning "the king's tun, the eorl's tun" are very insufficient; and though proof is certainly difficult, its burden is undoubtedly on Mr Seebohm.

Again, the theory of universal manors, with descent of the yard-lands or manorial holdings to one son only, is difficult to reconcile with the undoubted Anglo-Saxon law of succession among all the sons equally, which appears as the rule, and not as an exception. Yet this rule, as applied to manors or hams, would break up the equal holdings or yard-lands into varying fragments. In short we may, without underrating the ingenuity of Mr Seebohm's arguments, or the value of a large portion of his reconstruction of the English land system, decline at present to accept his theory of a Roman and South German parentage for the manor.

The English land system is therefore in the main Teutonic, or its Roman origin has not yet been established, even in part. To Mr Coote's theory of simple derivation of the English from the Roman system we may oppose a complete refutation. No Roman system, pure and simple, will explain the curious "threefield" system, which, whether tilled by a free community or as a manorial settlement, covered the greater part of England. Mr Seebohm's more guarded theory of South German and Roman origin we may regard as unproven as yet: its maintenance, together with recent German researches, will compel the advocates of a North German origin for our early land system to restate their case, and to dispel or recognise the new difficulties which new knowledge has brought against them.

CHAPTER IV.

ROMAN LAW IN THE EARLY FAMILY LAW.

ROMAN influence is not alleged to have seriously affected this branch of the Anglo-Saxon law. In the time of Bracton indeed it acted through ecclesiastical channels to produce changes of importance, but what little is known of the early English law of the family and kindred is purely Teutonic; and the family was, as in the other German tribes, the most important institution of private law, and the foundation of the whole police and criminal systems.

The Family Law of the Anglo-Saxons consists of two distinct parts:

(1) The law of the maegth, maegburh, or kindred', which has exercised very slight influence on modern law. It is certainly not Roman, but Teutonic.

(2) The law of the family, which, in its essential characteristics, remains to the present day the same. This again appears largely Teutonic. Sir Henry Maine indeed says that, "All the Germanic immigrants seem to have recognised a corporate union of the family under the mund, or authority of a patriarchal chief, but his powers are obviously only the relics of decayed patria potestas." But the absence of agnation, and the recognition of kinship through the mother, point rather to a tribal household, probably developing from polyandry, than to the Roman patria potestas of a patriarchal system.

1 Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 123.

2 Ibid. p. 148.

3 Ancient Law, p. 144.

THE TEUTONIC FAMILY.

41

In the maeg-lagu, or law of the kindred', admittedly Teutonic, we need only notice one point. Every person had two maegthe, his father's kin (faedren maegth), and his mother's kin (médren maegth), the maegth being the whole kindred of some one propositus. The wife did not pass into her husband's maegth, but remained in her own; and this médren maegth could protect the rights of the wife and children against the father. We have here the fact of "men calling themselves relatives of their mother's relatives," which Sir Henry Maine has expressly stated to be incompatible with and fatal to the patria potestas2.

The Teutonic family presents more marked features of difference from Roman law. Agnation and its results are. absent, and its system of emancipation is radically different. For though in the early Teutonic family there was a formal emancipation on attaining majority (which was physical maturity), by giving arms in the assembly, or by cutting the hair, this ceremony, while it destroyed the father's rights over the son's person, in no way affected the son's position in the father's kindred or his rights of succession. The slight evidence as to Anglo-Saxon law seems to show a fixed age of majority (at first 10 years, then 12, with a tendency to lengthen to 15, the age of majority for non-military tenures under the Normans). During the minority the father is guardian of the child, but his personal control ceases at majority, and there is nothing in Anglo-Saxon law to show that he had any rights in the son's property after that period. The attainment of majority in girls, at the age of 12, freed their persons from the disposal of the father. This system is clearly unlike the Roman patria potestas.

The marriage relation, with its effects on property is distinctly Teutonic, and, as such, has affected all later law3. The marriage at first was a real contract of sale; the beweddung

1 See Anglo-Saxon Law, pp. 123144.

2 Ancient Law, p. 149.

3 Anglo-Saxon Law, pp. 155-161. 421, the present age of majority,

was that fixed by the Normans for military tenures.

5 Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 166. Kenny, on Effects of Marriage on Property. London, 1879. pp. 22, 65.