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were allowed to take possession of folkland and to hold and use it upon sufferance, subject to the will of the state or of the king as its representative.1 A person who held a loan or "laen" of a portion of the folkland in this way, held it purely upon sufferance and according to custom, and not under the terms of a book or charter.2 Any individual or corporation possessed of proprietary rights over land could grant to another the beneficial enjoyment of the same, to be held either under the terms of a book or subject only to the terms of the customary law.3 Land so let or loaned was called laenland. The estate or laen thus created was not a leasehold; it was not an estate for a term of years, or for a A "laen " fixed and limited time: it was generally an estate for life or generally an lives. That is to say, if a man was in possession of land,

estate for life.

at the will

of the lord anun

booked laen."

although he might hold only upon sufferance, his possession was prima facie a possession for life. If the laen was held by book, upon its terms its character and extent depended; Occupancy if there was no book, the laen was held at the will of the lord, subject to the rights and limitations imposed upon that will by the customary law.5 Reference has already been made to the dependent communities that grew up, not only upon the folkland, but upon the estates of all the great proprietors. Each group organized itself into a township, whose internal arrangements were identical with those of the free community. The title to the land so occupied by the dependent community remained in the lord; while the dependent townsmen, the lord's tenants, acquired by long occupancy, and by the payment of certain dues in services or in kind, a prescriptive right to continue in possession. A case of this kind presents a distinct illustration of what has been called an "unbooked laen," that is, of a laen or occupancy depending upon the will of the lord, as modified by the customary law. The system of letting land for fixed rent and services

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had become sufficiently general by the end of the seventh century to be made the subject of special legislation.1

6. The growth of the township out of the mark, and the The towncharacter of the estates which the townsmen possessed, were tun-moot. ship and the subjects necessarily involved in the preceding examination of the ownership of land. But the township, like the mark, possessed a political as well as an agricultural aspect. In the states or kingdoms which arose as the conquest advanced, the township was the narrowest form of local government, and it has ever remained the "unit of the constitutional machinery." In the qualified members of this corporate unity resided the power of ordering their own village and agricultural life. This power was vested in the village assembly or tun-moot, which, in an independent township, consisted of all the alodial owners residing within it; in a dependent one, of the body of tenants who had united in the formation of a village-community upon the land of a lord. In the tun-moot, Tun-moot which could hardly have possessed more than quasi-judicial the internal functions, resided the power to regulate all the internal affairs affairs of of the township by the making of by-laws, a term which is ship, said to mean laws enacted by a "by," as the township was

regulated

the town

its own offi

tives.

I called in the northern 4 shires. The tun-moot elected its and elected own officers and also provided for the representation of its cers and interests in the courts of the hundred and the shire, where representathe gerefa and four selectmen appeared for the township.5 In this arrangement appears the earliest form of the representative principle.

With the advent of Christianity the township became in- The town volved in new relations. The limits of the political divisions ship as the parish, of the country were adopted as the boundaries of ecclesiastical jurisdictions. The diocese of a bishop was usually made coextensive with a shire or kingdom, while the limits of the township were used to define the jurisdiction of a single priest. In this way the township became so involved with

1 "If a man agree for a virgate of land or more, at a fixed rent, and shall plough it, if the lord wish to yield him the land for rent and service, it is not necessary for him to take it if he will give him no house, nor shall he lose the land." - Ine, c. 67. Cf. Essays in A. S. Law, p. 85.

2 Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 82.
8 Green, Making of Eng., p. 187.
4 Palgrave, Commonwealth, p. 8o.

Hen. I., vii. § 8. Stubbs, Const.
Hist., vol. i. p. 95.

6 Kemble, Saxons in Eng., vol. ii. p.
359; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 227;
Green, Making of Eng., pp. 332, 333-

as the manor.

of the tunmoot

divided between

vestry and

the parish, and the meeting of the township for church purposes became so involved with the meeting of the vestry, that in small parishes the idea and even the name of the township is frequently lost in that of the parish.1

As the process of feudalization advanced, as the principle of lord and man became dominant, the free townships lost their independence, and became subject to a superior lord. After the Norman conquest the dependent township appears Jurisdiction as the manor of the lord, and the ancient jurisdiction of the village moot survives to this day in the parish vestry and in the manorial courts. The land-holding inhabitants of the the parish township, considered as members of the parish, still assemble in vestry-meeting for the purpose of electing the parish officers, and for the ordering of other local interests not involved in the manorial jurisdiction; while in the court baron and customary court the land-holding inhabitants, considered as tenants of a lord, still meet together and regulate many things pertaining to husbandry and pasturage which originally belonged to the mark-moot. The very existence of a manor depends upon the continuance within it of a sufficient number of freehold tenants to compose a court baron; for, as Coke has expressed it, "a court baron is the chief prop and pillar of a manor, which no sooner faileth, but the manor falleth to the ground." 5

the mano

rial courts.

The hundred and the hundred-moot.

7. Having considered the origin and growth of the township and its court, it next becomes necessary in the ascending order to examine the origin and history of the district which represented a union of townships,6-known in later times as the hundred. It has heretofore been maintained

1 "The parish, then, is the ancient vicus or tun-scipe regarded ecclesiastically. As many townships were too small to require or to support a separate church and priest, many parishes contain several townships."-Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 227. See, also, Ibid., p. 85.

2 On the "Development of the Manorial System," see Digby, Law of Real Property, p. 43; Maine, VillageCommunities, lecture v., "The Process of Feudalization."

8 Digby, Law of Real Property, p. 8; Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 91.

4" The right of the markmen to determine whether a new settler should

be admitted to the township exists in the form of admitting a tenant at the court baron and customary court of every manor; the right of the markmen to determine the by-laws, the local arrangements for the common husbandry, or the fencing of the hay-fields, or the proportion of cattle to be turned into the common pasture, exists still in the manorial courts and in the meetings of the townships."-Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 84. See, also, Maine, Village-Communities, p. 139.

5 Coke's Copyholder, xxxi.; Digby, Law of Real Property, p. 53:

6 "The technical name for such a union is in Germany a gau or bant;

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originally a

that the early English kingdoms or petty states, in which the settlers originally grouped themselves, were aggregations of pagi, gás, or shires, each one of which represented an ag gregation of townships. It follows, therefore, that the dis- Modern trict in which the townships were embraced was originally a hundred pagus, or shire; and, as such, a division and not a subdivi- shire. sion of a state. This district, usually described in the earlier documents as regio, pagus, or provincia, probably represented either the pagus or district in which the hundred warriors originally settled themselves, or a union of townships originally isolated and independent. These districts were not at all uniform in size, their boundaries generally depending upon the physical conformation of the country in which the settlements were made. In the In the process of aggregation, out of which the united kingdom finally arose, and which will be more fully explained hereafter, the early kingdoms descended in status one degree: they themselves became divisions of a greater whole; that is to say, scirs or shires. And as a necessary consequence, the shires of which they were composed descended to the status of subdivisions known in later times as hundreds. In this way the conclusion is attained, which may be accepted as a general law, that “the state of the seventh century became the shire of the tenth, while the shire of the seventh century became the hundred of the tenth." The word "hundred," as applied to the territorial district, first occurs in the laws of Eadgar. The hundredmoot was composed of all the freeholders resident within the district, together with the representatives from the townships, and was a court of both civil and criminal jurisdiction.5 It met frequently, and no suit could be carried to a higher

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in England the ancient name gá has been almost universally superseded by that of scir or shire." Saxons in Eng., vol. i. p. 72. "The union of a number of townships for the purpose of judicial administration, peace, and defence, formed what is known as the hundred or wapentake; a district answering to the pagus of Tacitus, the harred of Scandinavia, the huntari or gau of Germany."- Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 96, note 2; Grimm, R. A., p. 532.

1 Terms used as equivalents for shire. Essays in A. S. Law, p. 16.

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The early kingdom and the folk-moot.

court until it had first been heard in the court of the hundred.1

8. While the development of Germany advanced in the path of political consolidation, that of England advanced in the path of political confederation.2 The course of this development is broken into two distinct and well defined epochs the first, embracing the drawing together of the early kingdoms into the seven or eight aggregates generally known as the heptarchic states; the second, the drawing together of the heptarchic states into the one united kingdom of all the English under the house of Cerdic. It will not be necessary for the present to look beyond the first period, during which the early kingdoms coalesced in the formation of the heptarchic states. In the structure of these larger aggregates one fact of paramount importance stands prominently forth, and that is that the early kingdoms descend in status without a sacrifice of their autonomy; they preserve their ancient boundaries, their national assemblies or folk-moots, and their tribal kings. The kingdom of the Mercians in Mid-Britain seems to have been a mere confedfor a long eracy, which resulted from the gradual union of smaller tribal kings. States, whose kings, during the early days, still continued to exist.3 In the same way Wessex consisted of a union of kindred states, each having its own ealdorman or underking. From the Chronicle we learn that five West Saxon kings appeared at one time in a single battle. East Anglia was made up of two settlements, the North and South Folk, whose names are still preserved in the shires of Norfolk and Suffolk, into which the kingdom was finally divided. Kent, like East Anglia, was probably composed of two tribal divisions originally distinct; and in the eighth century it broke up into the kingdoms of the East and West Kentings, probably upon the lines of the earlier states. And only after a

Early kingdoms preserve

their folk

moot, and

time their

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answering to the 'rachimburgii' of the
Franks.' Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i.
pp. 103, 104.
1 Æthelstan, iii. § 3; Eadgar, iii. 2.
2 Essays in A. S. Law, p. 21. The
66 'confederation" here referred to must
be understood to mean no more than
the coalescence of the local communi-
ties into one whole, without the loss of
their autonomous character.

8 Freeman, Norm. Conq., vol. i. pp. 18, 19. "In the early days of Mercia, kings of Hwiccia, Hecana, Middle Anglia, and Lindsey still subsisted." Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 171. 4 E. Chron., a. 626.

5 "It is probable that from the earliest times Kent had at least two kings, whose capitals were respectively Canterbury and Rochester, the seat of two

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