wish concerning their destination in his will, but an express act of the king and the witan was necessary to give legal force to such a disposition. . . . The tribute derived from what remained of the public land and the revenue of the royal demesne sufficed for the greater part of the expenses of the royal house, etc." 1

On what authorities is this theory founded? Stubbs, usually so precise, does not quote his authorities in his notes, speaks vaguely of “charters." It is easy to see that, whilst appearing to accept the interpretation of the word folkland which Mr. Vinogradoff rediscovered in Spelman, Stubbs retains a historical theory founded principally on the three texts of which we have just been speaking and on the erroneous explanation of the word folkland. His expression, quoted above, respecting the possessor of an estate in public land, who expresses a desire in his will with regard to the destination of that estate, is founded solely on the will of ealdorman Alfred; 2 now, as we have seen, Alfred expresses a wish relative to his folkland, which as a matter of fact is a family estate, and not a portion of ager publicus.

Letter from

It has been claimed, it is true, that other documents in which the term folkland is not used, attest the existence of an Anglo-Saxon ager publicus. Mr. Bede to Egbert Vinogradoff has clearly shown how unjustifiable such an interpretation is. The most celebrated of these documents is a letter of Bede to Egbert: the pseudo-monasteries of his time had caused so many estates, tot loca, to be given to them, that there did not remain enough to endow the sons of the nobles and warriors, ut omnino desit locus ubi filii nobilium aut emeritorum militum possessionem accipere possint. Stubbs concludes from this that "the sons of

1. See especially Const. Hist., i, pp. 82-83, 202-203, 212. See also pp. 118, 127, note 4, 131, 138, 159, 302, etc.

2. It may be noted too that, in the document, there is mention of the consent of the king, but the witan are not referred to.

с

the nobles and the warriors who had earned their rest looked for at least a life estate out of the public land.1 Who can fail to see that this translation of the words loca, locus, has arisen from a preconceived idea? It is perfectly allowable to suppose that the grants of which Bede speaks were made from the royal demesne. In England, as in France, men complained of the alienations from the royal demesne, or at least of the manner in which they were effected. That is all that Bede's letter proves.

It was doubtless with a view to restraining the imprudence of which Bede speaks that in the following

Consent of Witenagemot to alienations of land

century the witan intervened in matters of alienation of the demesne. The consent of the Witenagemot to alienations of land is an incontestable and interesting fact, but it has not the significance Stubbs attributes to it. We must begin by remarking with Mr. Maitland that this consent is at first very seldom expressed,-four times only in charters anterior to 750; it becomes habitual in the ninth century, then falls into desuetude, and from about 900 or 925 onwards is replaced by the mere mention of the confirmation by witnesses.2 Again, there is no reason to attach a very special importance to the intervention of the witan in cases of alienation, since they dealt with all kinds of business; their very extensive political rôle is one of the characteristic features of Anglo-Saxon institutions. Finally, the mention we have of the consent of the witan in no wise confers more probability on the theory that there existed a public land distinct from the royal demesne. In the often quoted charter of 858 the land which Ethelbert alienates with the consent of his witan is called terra juris mei. We have no document in

1. op. cit. p. 171. The passage in Bede [ed. Plummer, i, 415] is quoted in note (2).

2. Cf. Stubbs, Const. Hist., i, p. 212.

which the land the alienation of which the witan confirm or revoke appears as a part of the ager publicus.

Thus there is no ground for distinguishing between public land and royal demesne. The Anglo-Saxon kings had evidently in that respect ideas as vague and blurred in outline as our Merovingians, and it would be very singular if they had established a distinction between two things so difficult not to confound.

Stubbs' theory about Anglo-Saxon public land is therefore a weak part of his work. He was often enough unfortunate when he founded general theories on the work of others. But he was a scholar of incomparable perspicacity and sobriety when he studied the sources himself; this was most frequently the case, and it is for that reason that his book maintains its position.

36

III.

TWELFHYND-MAN AND TWYHYND-MAN.

A NEW THEORY RESPECTING FAMILY SOLIDARITY AMONG THE ANGLO-SAXONS.

Usual

ACCORDING to the usual interpretation which has been adopted by Stubbs,' the twelfhynd-man is the man who has a wergild of 1,200 shillings, and the interpretation twyhynd-man is the simple ceorl, who has a wergild of one-sixth of that amount. Similarly the oath of the twelfhynd-man, in a court of justice, is worth six times that of the ceorl. The intermediate class of sixhynd-men possessed a wergild of 600 shillings. Hynd, hynden is hund, a hundred. Twelfhynd-man ought to be translated man of twelve hundreds, twyhyndman by man of two hundreds, etc.

of Mr. Seebohm

In a fairly recent book, which is moreover a work of absorbing interest, Mr. F. Seebohm proposes an entirely different explanation, which serves him as Interpretation the foundation of his theory as to the importance of family solidarity in the formation of Anglo-Saxon society.2 According to him the term hynden, which we find in the 54th chapter of the laws of King Ini or Ine, has no numerical significance, and denotes the compurgators who support with their oath a kinsman accused of murder. The judicial oath of full value, which can aid a man most effectively to purge himself of an accusation, is the oath taken by the twelve oath-helpers of his kindred, having each a complete family. In primitive times a great number of relatives is an unquestionable advantage.

1. Const. Hist. i, pp. 128 note 4, 175, 178.

2. Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon law, 1902, pp. 406 sqq.,

499 sqq.

The kindred aids the accused with the weight of its oath, or else by fighting for him when private war is inevitable, or else again by paying a share of his wergild. The twelfhynd-man, then, is the man in possession of a full kindred, which assures him the maximum of credit in the court of justice, and enables him to produce "twelve hyndens," that is to say, twelve kinsmen representing twelve groups ready to defend him. The twy hynd-man is the man who does not enjoy this advantage; he can only produce two oath-helpers, or at least those whom he produces are worth only "two hyndens," carry only one-sixth of the weight of the oath-helpers of the twelfhynd-man. Whether he be, by origin, an emancipated slave or a free man of low condition, or a native belonging to the conquered race, or an immigrant foreigner, he is in every case a man who has not a family sufficiently numerous to protect him when he is accused. The result for him is that he is obliged to seek the protection of a magnate, an act fraught with great consequences; the twyhynd-men thus form the class of tenants dependent on a lord, who at critical times takes the place, for his men, of the powerful kindred, which is at once the pride and the support of the twelfhynd-man.

The unfortunate thing is that Mr. Seebohm gives no convincing reasons for the new translation which he gives of the hynden of Ini. There is no Objections reason for rejecting in this passage its ordinary meaning: hund, a hundred. Moreover, we 1. Chapter 54 of Ini (see Liebermann, Gesetze, i, pp. 112-115) is, moreover, very obscure. Mr. Chadwick in his Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (1905), pp. 134-151 has minutely studied the question of the value of the oath expressed in hides. A relatively satisfactory interpretation of Chapter 54 can be deduced from his laborious researches, an interpretation which very nearly agrees with the translation proposed by Liebermann in his edition. The first clause of the chapter would signify : when a man is accused of murder and wishes to purge himself of the accusation by oath, it is necessary that for each hundred shillings (which the composition he is threatened with having to pay comprises) an cath should intervene "of the value of thirty hides." This oath of the value of thirty hides is that of the twelfhynd-man; it is worth six times that