This cus

ual property probably contin@ans as long as they remained

ued amongst th in their own country; but when their conquests carried them into other parts, another object besides the possession of the land arose, which obliged them to make a change in this particular. In the distribution of the conquered lands, the ancient possessors of them became an object of consideration, and the management of these became one of the principal branches of their polity. It was expedient towards holding them in perfect subjection, that they should be habituated to obey one person, and that a kind of cliental relation should be created between them; therefore the land, with the slaves, and the people in a state next to slavery, annexed to it, was Estates for bestowed for life in the general distribution. life. When life-estates were once granted, it seemed a natural consequence that inheritances should immediately supervene. When a durable connection is created between a certain man and a certain portion of land by a possession for his whole life, and when his children have grown up and have been supported on that land, it seems so great an hardship to separate them, and to deprive thereby the family of all means of subsisting, that nothing could be more generally desired nor more reasonably allowed than an inheritance; and this reasonableness was strongly enforced by the great change wrought in their affairs when life-estates were granted. Whilst according to the ancient custom lands were only given for a year, there was a rotation so quick that every family came in its turn to be easily provided for, and had not long to wait; but the children of a tenant for life, when they lost the benefit of their father's

Inheritance.

Book-land.

Folk-land.

possession, saw themselves as it were immured upon every side by the life-estates, and perceived no reasonable hope of a provision from any new arrangement. These inheritances began very early in England. By a law of King Alfred it appears that they were then of a very ancient establishment: and as such inheritances were intended for great stability, they fortified them by charters; and therefore they were called Book-land. This was done with regard to the possession of the better sort: the meaner, who were called ceorles, if they did not live in a dependence on some thane, held their small portions of land as an inheritance likewise, not by charter, but by a sort of prescription. This was called Folk-land. These estates of inheritance, both the greater and the meaner, were not fiefs; they were to all purposes allodial, and had hardly a single property of a feud; they descended equally to all the children, males and females, according to the custom of gavelkind, a custom absolutely contrary to the genius of the feudal tenure; and whenever estates were granted in the later Saxon times by the bounty of the crown with an intent that they should be inheritable, so far wer‹, they from being granted with the complicated load of all the feudal services annexed, that in all the charters of that kind which subsist they are bestowed with a full power of alienation, et liberi ab omni seculari gravamine. This was the general condition of those inheritances which were derived from the right of original conquest, as well to all the soldiers as to the leader; and these estates, as it is said, were not even forfeitable, no, not for felony, as if that were in some sort the necessary consequence of an

inheritable estate. So far were they from resembling a fief. But there were other possessions Saxon fiefs. which bore a nearer resemblance to fiefs,

at least in their first feeble and infantile state of the tenure, than those inheritances which were held by an absolute right in the proprietor. The great officers who attended the court, commanded armies, or distributed justice must necessarily be paid and supported; but in what manner could they be paid? In money they could not, because there was very little money then in Europe, and scarce any part of that little came into the prince's coffers. The only method of paying them was by allotting lands for their subsistence whilst they remained in his service. For this reason, in the original distribution, vast tracts of land were left in the hands of the king. If any served the king in a military command, his land may be said to have been in some sort held by knight-service. If the tenant was in an office about the king's person, this gave rise to sergeantry; the persons who cultivated his lands may be considered as holding by socage. But the long train of services that made afterwards the learning of the tenures were then not thought of, because these feuds, if we may so call them, had not then come to be inheritances,— which circumstance of inheritance gave rise to the whole feudal system. With the Anglo-Saxons the feuds continued to the last but a sort of pay or salary of office. The trinoda necessitas, so much spoken of, which was to attend the king in his expeditions, and to contribute to the building of bridges and repair of highways, never bound the lands by way of tenure, but as a political regulation, which equally affected every class and condition of men and every species of possession.

Gavelkind.

The manner of succeeding to lands in England at this period was, as we have observed, by Gavelkind,— an equal distribution amongst the children, males and females. The ancient Northern nations had but an imperfect notion of political power. That the possessor of the land should be the governor of it was a simple idea; and their schemes extended but little further. It was not so in the Greek and Italian commonwealths. In those the property of the land was in all respects similar to that of goods, and had nothing of jurisdiction annexed to it; the government there was a merely political institution. Amongst such a people the

custom of distribution could be of no ill conse quence, because it only affected property. But gavelkind amongst the Saxons was very prejudicial; for, as government was annexed to a certain possession in land, this possession, which was continually changing, kept the government in a very fluctuating state: so that their civil polity had in it an essential evil, which contributed to the sickly condition in which the Anglo-Saxon state always remained, as well as to its final dissolution.

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I.

VIEW OF THE STATE OF EUROPE AT THE TIME OF THE NORMAN INVASION.

BB

EFORE the period of which we are going to treat, England was little known or considered in Europe. Their situation, their domestic calamities, and their ignorance circumscribed the views and politics of the English within the bounds of their own. island. But the Norman conqueror threw down all these barriers. The English laws, manners, and maxims were suddenly changed; the scene was enlarged; and the communication with the rest of Europe, being thus opened, has been preserved ever since in a continued series of wars and negotiations. That we may, therefore, enter more fully into the matters which lie before us, it is necessary that we understand the state of the neighboring continent at the time when this island first came to be interested in its affairs.

The Northern nations who had overran the Roman Empire were at first rather actuated by avarice than ambition, and were more intent upon plunder than conquest; they were carried beyond their original purposes, when they began to form regular governments, for which they had been prepared by no just ideas of legislation. For a long time, therefore, there was little of order in their affairs or foresight in