Page:Landholding in England.djvu/13

, or Assembly of the Wise, and without its consent the acts of a Saxon king were illegal. This inheritance has been more or less the common property of all the men of Gothic blood. And inextricably bound up with this idea was the custom of Trial by Jury, whereby a man is tried by his equals, and not by his superiors, as was the case under despotic governments. English law has never lost the impress of this principle.

In historical times, two great systems of land-tenure have prevailed—the allodial and the feudal. The systems may differ in detail in different countries and among different races, but fundamentally all systems belong to one or the other of these two. The differences between them have often been misapprehended. Because the allodial system was a freehold system, it has been sometimes supposed that no duties attached to lands held under it. But we may safely say that some duties (gradually crystallised into the shape of rent, but at first personal service) have always attached to the holding of land, and under the allodial system a man was as much bound to defend his country as under the feudal. The grand fundamental difference was that in the allodial system a man did not hold of an overlord; the duty and service he owed were to the community, not to an overlord. Under the feudal system, all land was held of a feudal superior. The system was a ladder—the little men held of the great men, who in turn held of some great noble, who held directly of the King. And even some little men came to hold directly of the Crown—or as it was called, in capite. This was especially the case where lands had been forfeit, and were granted or sold by the King to a new owner. The reason why the King was so willing to grant even small estates in capite was merely self-defence. Allegiance to a feudal superior was sometimes a very dangerous doctrine—the Norman barons had so high a notion of it that they vehemently resisted the King's demand that their tenants should take a second oath—of allegiance to the King. A baron's tenants formed in effect a little army, ready to fight in the baron's little wars with his neighbours—and sometimes to march with that baron against the King himself!

The old Saxon system, brought with them by the Saxons when they conquered England, was allodial. The word