30β
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
gave five ploughlands of folcland for five of bocland,
and then made the folcland bocland, the bocland
folcland.
In this general spoliation it is to be supposed that
the kings would not omit to share : accordingly we
find them causing estates to be booked to them by
their witan ; which estates, when thus become their
private and heritable property, they devise and deal
with at their pleasure : and indeed, as the king’s
consent was necessary to all such conversions, he
was much better able to obtain that of his witan in
his own case, than bishops, thanes or others were
in their cases : these generally found themselves
compelled to pay handsomely for the favour they
required. With respect to ecclesiastical lands, we
frequently find a loss of very large estates sub-
mitted to, in order to secure freedom to what re-
mained. There are also a few instances in which
lands having descended, encumbered with pay-
ments, the owners engage some powerful noble or
ecclesiastic to obtain their freedom,—that is, to per-
suade the witan into abolishing the charges. The
gratuity offered to the member whose influence was
to carry these ancient private acts of parliament, is
often very considerable. Towards the clρsing pe-
riod of the Anglosaxon polity, I should imagine
that nearly every acre of land in England had be-
come bocland ; and that as, in consequence of this,
there was no more room for the expansion of a free
population, the condition of the freemen became de-
pressed, while the estates of the lords increased in
number and extent. In this way the ceorlas or free
CH. Xt.]
Folcland and bo,cland.
307
cultivators gradually vanished, yielding to the ever
growing force of the noble class, accepting a de-
pendent position upon their bocland, and standing
to right in their courts, instead of their own old
county gemotas; while the lords themselves ran
riot, dealt with their once free neighbours at their
own discretion, and filled the land with civil dis-
sensions which not even the terrors of a foreign inva-
sion could still. Nothing can be more clear than
that the universal breaking up of society in the time
of Æ'Selred had its source in the ruin of the old
free organization of the country. The successes of
Swegen and Cnut, and even of William the Norman,
had much deeper causes than the mere gain or loss
of one or more battles. A nation never falls till
“ the citadel of its moral being” has been betrayed
and become untenable. Northern invasions will
not account for the state of brigandage which
ÆSSelred and his Witan deplore in so many of their
laws. The ruin of the free cultivators and the
overgrowth of the lords are much more likely
causes. At the same time it is even conceivable
that, but for the invasions of the ninth and tenth
centuries, the result which I have described might
have come upon us more suddenly. The sword
and the torch, plague, pestilence and famine are
very effectual checks to the growth of population;
and sufficient for a long time to adjust the balance
between the land and those it has to feed.
An estate of bocland might be subject to condi-
tions. It was perhaps not always easy to obtain
from the Witan all that avarice desired : accordingly
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