Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/119

 3. POLLOCK: ANGLO-SAXON LAW 105 on what can be inferred from Anglo-Norman sources. It is certain that there were a considerable number of inde- pendent free men holding land of various amounts down to the time of the Conquest. In the eastern counties some such holdings, undoubtedly free, were very small indeed.^ But many of the lesser free men were in practical subjection to a lord who was entitled to receive dues and services from them ; he got a share of their labour in tilling his land, rents in money and kind, and so forth. In short they were already in much the same position as those who were called villeins in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Also some poor free men seem to have hired themselves out to work for others from an early time.^ We know next to nothing of the rules under which free men, whether of greater or lesser substance, held " folk-land," that is, estates governed by the old customary law. Probably there was not much buying and selling of such land. There is no reason to suppose that alienation was easier than in other archaic societies, and some local customs found surviving long after the Conquest point to the conclusion that often the consent of the village as well as of the family was a necessary condition of a sale. IndeeJ it is not certain that folk-land, generally speaking, could be sold at all. There is equally no reason to think that ordinary free landholders could dispose of their land by will, or were in the habit of making wills for any purpose. Anglo-Saxon wills (or rather documents more like a modern will than a modern deed) exist, but they are the wills of great folk, such as were accustomed to witness the king's charters, had their own wills witnessed or confirmed by bishops and kings, and held charters of their own ; and it is by no means clear that the lands dealt with in these wills were held as ordinary folk-land. In some cases it looks as if a special licence or consent had been required; we also hear of per- sistent attempts by the heirs to dispute even gifts to great churches.^ Soon after the conversion of the south of England to Christianity, English kings began to grant the lordship and • See C. D. 226 compared with 256. 4
 * Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, 106. ^'^If, 43.