sine licentia domini"; sometimes varied where the person also is bound by "non potuit recedere sine licentia domini." Many socmanni are bound in this way: e.g. "XII socmanni qui non recedere potuerunt de terra sua," and a number of socmen T. R. E. are recorded as forcibly added to manors T. R. W. The large number of bordarii and servi show a population in considerable dependence, which is curious when we consider the early settlement of Essex, and its proximity to the Danish counties.

In Sussex1 a far freer state of things is found to exist T. R. E., though the county is not uniformly free, and at the time of Domesday there is an entire absence of free tenants of a manor. But we find constant entries of allodial tenure T. R. E. More than 80 then tenants of land are spoken of as allodiarii, or holding per allodium, followed by the significant free entry "nunquam geldavit": there are 35 tenants, qui potuerunt ire quolibet, and 5 more who could carry their land with them. Entries of restriction, e.g. "Wenestan. tenuit de Oswardo, nec quolibet ire potuit," are very scarce, and I should infer that freedom of alienation was the rule in the county before the Conquest, and that most of the minor free tenants found death or the forfeiture of their lands at Hastings.

Kent gives curious results, for Kent is the county in which the old Saxon custom of equal division in intestacy has survived: the "yeoman of Kent with his yearly rent" is well known in English ballads, and, for prose, the Law Courts of the fourteenth century laid down that there was no villeinage in Kent, and that a man's freedom was established by showing that any one of his ancestors was born in Kent. But Domesday

shows a large number of manors; five-sixths of the population are manorial tenants, and there is a fair proportion of slaves. There are very few entries respecting powers of alienation in the Domesday of Kent, and those found relate to freedom of alienation, which we should therefore infer to be the exception. Four tenants potuerunt ire quolibet cum terra, and four potuerunt se vertere quolibet cum terra, six potuerunt se vertere quolibet, one qui potuit ire quolibet, and one qui potuit ire quolibet sine licentia domini. There are no entries of the simple power of sale, or of any other restrictions on it. In fact it is not very easy to draw any inferences as to the condition of the county before the Conquest, or to see any reason for the exceptional survival of the old customs after it1.

Travelling west, we find a state of things distinctly less free. In Wiltshire, which has a large proportion of slaves, and an entire absence of socmen and liberi homines, the records as to alienation are usually merely entries that the tenant potuit ire quo voluit; that he had liberty to take his land with him is never recorded. There are a large number of church leases, and over 30 entries "qui tenuerunt T. R. E. non poterant ab ecclesia separari"; while the constant statement geldabat shows the servile nature of the tenures and the probable absence of power to alienate the land.

These examples show the complexity of the Anglo-Saxon land system, especially in the reign of the Confessor, at a time when the germs of feudalism were developing, and the piety of the monarch was fettering much of the land with religious services. Powers of alienation and devise, and the order of succession, were different according to the character of the land, the mode in which it was acquired, or even the county in which it was situated. Lands in the same manor or hundred might have different qualities, and lands of the same owner might be

in his power to a different degree. The restraints which existed on alienation were either in the interests of the family as in heir-land, of the will of the donor as in book-land, of the church, or of the lord or possessor of the soc or jurisdiction. Against the first two of these the interests of the individual tenant for the time being were successfully struggling. Restraints imposed for the two latter causes, and especially those created in the interests of the lord, grew to such an extent that they strongly fettered most of the land in England.

CHAPTER III.

FEUDAL LAND LAW.

ALTHOUGH the germs from which a feudal system, or one in which the organization of society is based upon the tenure of land, might develope certainly existed in England before the Conquest, the Feudal System as it grew in England after the coming of William was undoubtedly of Norman introduction. The essential features of feudalism are tenure of land by each landowner of a superior to whom he is bound by a tie of personal fealty, from whom he receives protection and security, and to whom he owes services, usually military, as the consideration for his enjoyment of the land. The English system shows in addition a personal tie of fidelity to the king as supreme landowner, which overrides the vassal's fealty to his immediate lord, and which tends to counteract the disruptive effects of the continental feudalism, in which the great tenants in capite were each an almost independent potentate over whom the king, his nominal lord, had practically no control.

The justification of the system is the organization for national defence which it provides at a time when nations and lands were only safe in the possession of the strong man armed. For agricultural purposes there was no advantage except comparative security of tenure: the reason of the system was not so much the efficient, as the safe, tilling of land.

It cannot be truly said that feudalism was imposed on England at one time or by one measure. Its greatest effects were seen among those who owned the land; the condition of the cultivators was at first but little changed. The Folc-land

of before the Conquest became the Terra Regis of the Norman kings; the large estates of the principal English nobles were confiscated by William and distributed by feudal tenure among his leading followers, who in their turn rewarded with grants of land to be held of them by military service the armed men in their train. But it is not probable that the cultivating portion of the nation was much affected in tenure by the Conquest, except in those counties whose fyrd fought for Harold at Hastings, or which King William laid waste in the north, or in the case of the smaller freemen whose land was too insignificant to confiscate, and whose very insignificance led them to commend themselves and their land to a lord1.

According to many writers, the period of the Conquest was marked by the rapid conversion of independent village communities into manors dependent on a lord, but Mr Seebohm's investigations have gone far to disprove this theory, and if this is so, if communities in form manorial were widely prevalent before the Conquest, the tenure of land from the point of view of its cultivators was practically unchanged, though the tenure of the owners of the land became more definitely feudal, and the services they rendered more precise.

The English feudal system grows rapidly into completeness: Ranulf Flambard, the justiciar of William Rufus, is the first to give it definiteness, by developing its incidents on a logical basis in the interests of the superior lords. Such legislation as we find is in the interests of the greater landowners, and the complaints as to the working of the system are of the uncertainty of the incidents of its tenure, which enables tenants to be oppressed by extortionate demands. When the commutation of personal service for money payments, which dates from the institution of scutage by Henry II. in 1159, sets in, the system becomes rather a financial boon to the lords than a system of national defence, and from the region of finance we shall be brought to consider the commercial aspect of the land question.

Of the Saxon tenures of land Folc-land, as we have seen, became the Terra Regis; the land of free communities, if any 1 v. supra, pp. 9, 26.