A history of tithes

by Henry William Clarke

Folcland and Bocland.

Folcland was the general property of the community—i.e., Anglo-Saxon national property—terra fiscalis, and its possessors were bound to assist in repairing royal vills and in other public works; and were also liable to have travellers quartered upon them for subsistence. They were required to give hospitality to kings and great men in their progresses through the country; to furnish them with carriages and relays of horses, and to extend the same assistance to their messengers, followers, and servants, and even to persons who had charge of their hawks, horses, and hounds. Such are the burdens from which lands were liberated when converted by charter into bocland. For breach of these conditions they were liable to forfeiture or witeraeden; that is, fines. Freemen of all ranks and conditions, as well as common people, held folcland. The possessor had only a life-interest in it. On his demise the king could dispose of it to another. The holder may also possess bocland. Every one was desirous of having grants of folcland, and to convert as much as possible of it into bocland.

Bocland was land held by book or charter. It had been land severed by an act of the government from the folcland, and, by a written instrument was converted into an estate of perpetual inheritance. The possessors of bocland were released from all services to the public except the trinoda necessitas; that is, contributing to military expeditions, repairs of castles and bridges. The Church contrived in some cases to obtain exemption from them, but in general its lands, like those of others, were subject to them. The greater part of the charters granting exemptions to the Church, are forgeries. The estates of the higher nobility consisted chiefly of bocland. Bishops and abbots had bocland of their own in addition to what they held in right of the Church. The Anglo-Saxon kings had private estates of bocland, and these estates did not merge in the crown, but were devisable by will, gift, or sale, and transmissible by inheritance in the same manner as bocland held by a subject. Among the Anglo-Saxons royalty was elective. It sometimes happened that on the demise of the king his nearest blood did not succeed to the throne. The former king’s private estate did not then pass to his successor, but to his own children. Hence the advantage of a private estate in addition to the demesne or crown lands. The folcland could not be converted into bocland without the consent of the king by and with the advice of his Witenagemót, an expression of the national will in its distribution. There is hardly a Saxon charter creating bocland, which is not said to have been granted by the king with the consent and leave of his nobles and great men. “Cum consilio, consensu et licentia procerum,” or similar expressions. If that consent were withheld, the king’s grant would be invalid. There was a case of this sort. Baldred, king of Kent, had given to Christ Church, Canterbury, the manor of Malling, in the county of Sussex; but the king having offended his nobles, they refused to ratify his grant, and therefore the grant had not taken effect until King Egbert, in 838, with his counsel assembled at Kingston-upon-Thames, restored the manor to the Church through the action of Archbishop Ceolnoth.[96]

If the king himself received a grant of folcland, he had first to receive the consent of his Witan. Ethelwulf booked twenty hides of folcland to himself in his private capacity, but he had the consent of his Witan;[97] Offa did the same.

When folcland was appropriated to the king’s subsistence, that is, to the maintenance of his household, court, etc., it was said to be held in demesne, or let out to farm; afterwards called Terra Regis, or crownland. A great part of the “Terra Regis” of Domesday was folcland, or public property of the State, and the king was only the usufructuary possessor. We have an important definition of Terra Regis at page 75 of the “Exon Domesday,” viz., “The demesne land of the king belonging to the kingdom,” and we find a similar definition in the “Exchequer Domesday.”[98]

In dealing with Ethelwulf’s charters, it is essentially necessary to state Mr. Kemble’s six canons of tests by which the Saxon charter may not only be distinguished from a will or the record of a synodal decree, but whether it is spurious.

These canons are (1) The Invocation; (2) The Proem; (3) The Grant; (4) The Sanction; (5) The Date; (6) The Teste.

(1) The Invocation is a short ejaculation which usually forms the first member of the document. (2) The Proem is a general observation on the virtue of charity to the Church, the nothingness of earthly possessions, and the advantage of purchasing with them heavenly treasures. (3) The Grant, which is the important part of every charter. (4) The Sanction, by which is meant the punishment attached to the violation of the premises. It is called the “Si quis” clause. (5) The Date. (6) The Teste or Subscriptions. In almost all ecclesiastical documents the witnesses subscribed with their own hands.[99]