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20 The precise relation of the Dyke to the Marches, and the peculiar political and legal character of the latter, are derivable from the nature of the Anglo-Saxon Mark, or March; which is thus described by the most accurate authority on the subject:—

"The word Mark as applied to territory has a twofold meaning; it is, properly speaking, employed to denote, not only the whole district occupied by one small community, but more especially those forests and wastes by which the arable is enclosed, and which separate the possessions of one tribe from those of another. The Mark or boundary pasture land, and the cultivated space which it surrounds, and which is portioned out to the several members of the community, are inseparable; however different the nature of the property which can be had in them, they are in fact one whole; taken together they make up the whole territorial possession of the original cognatio, or tribe. The ploughed lands and meadows are guarded by the Mark.

"The most general characteristic of the Mark in its restricted and proper sense is, that it should not be distributed in arable, but remain in heath, forest, fen, and pasture. In it the Markmen had commonable rights; but there could be no private estate. Even if under peculiar circumstances any Markman obtained a right to essart or clear a portion of the forest, the portion so subjected to the immediate law of property ceased to be Mark."

"It is certain that some solemn religious ceremonies at first accompanied and consecrated the limitation of the Mark. What these may have consisted in among the heathen Anglo-Saxons we cannot now discover; but, however its limit was originally drawn or driven, it was, as its name denotes, distinguished by marks or signs."

"No matter how small or how large the community, it may be only a village, even a single household, or a whole state, it will still have a Mark, a space or boundary by which its own rights of jurisdiction are limited, and the encroachments of others kept off. The more extensive the community which is interested in the Mark, the more solemn and sacred the formalities by which it is consecrated and defended. Nor is the general rule abrogated by changes in the original compass of the communities; as smaller districts coalesce and become, as it were, compressed into one body, the smaller and original Marks may become obliterated and converted merely into commons, but the public Mark will have been increased upon the new and extended frontier. Villages may cease to be separated, but the larger divisions which have grown up by their union will still have a boundary of