s 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 were 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 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