[554] John of Salisbury inveighs against the game-laws of his age, with
an odd transition from the Gospel to the Pandects. Nec veriti sunt
hominem pro una bestiola perdere, quem unigentius Dei Filius sanguine
redemit suo. Quae ferae naturae sunt, et de jure occupantium fiunt, sibi
audet humana temeritas vindicare, &c. Polycraticon, p. 18.

[555] Le Grand, Vie privee des Francais, t. i. p. 325.

[556] For the injuries which this people sustained from the seigniorial
rights of the chace, in the eleventh century, see the Recueil des
Historiens, in the valuable preface to the eleventh volume, p. 181. This
continued to be felt in France down to the revolution, to which it did
not perhaps a little contribute. (See Young's Travels in France.) The
monstrous privilege of free-warren (monstrous, I mean, when not
originally founded upon the property of the soil) is recognised by our
own laws; though, in this age, it is not often that a court and jury
will sustain its exercise. Sir Walter Scott's ballad of the Wild
Huntsman, from a German original, is well known; and, I believe, there
are several others in that country not dissimilar in subject.

[557] Muratori, Dissert. 21. This dissertation contains ample evidence
of the wretched state of culture in Italy, at least in the northern
parts, both before the irruption of the barbarians, and, in a much
greater degree, under the Lombard kings.

[558] Schmidt, Hist. des Allem. t. i. p. 408. The following passage
seems to illustrate Schmidt's account of German villages in the ninth
century, though relating to a different age and country. "A toft," says
Dr. Whitaker, "is a homestead in a village, so called from the small
tufts of maple, elm, ash, and other wood, with which dwelling-houses
were anciently overhung. Even now it is impossible to enter Craven
without being struck with the insulated homesteads, surrounded by their
little garths, and overhung with tufts of trees. These are the genuine
tofts and crofts of our ancestors, with the substitution only of stone
for the wooden crocks and thatched roofs of antiquity." Hist. of Craven,
p. 380.

[559] It is laid down in the Speculum Saxonicum, a collection of feudal
customs which prevailed over most of Germany, that no one might have a
separate pasture for his cattle unless he possessed three mansi. Du
Cange, v. Mansus. There seems to have been a price paid, I suppose to
the lord, for agistment in the common pasture.

[560] The only m