[891] Cnut’s law (II. 62) about this matter seems to imply that in consequence of the immunities lavishly bestowed by his predecessors, the old ‘king’s feorm’ was only leviable from lands which were deemed to be the king’s lands, but that Cnut’s reeves had been demanding that this feorm should be supplemented by other lands. The king of his grace forbids them to do this. The old feorm has been changed into a rent of crown lands; a vague claim to ‘purveyance’ is abolished, but will appear again after the Conquest.
[892] In the A.-S. Chron. ann. 991, 1007, 1011, the Danegeld appears as a gafol; but this is the common word for a rent paid by a tenant to his landlord.
[893] Kemble, Saxons ii. 73–6.
[894] Already in 749 Æthelbald of Mercia in a general privilege for the churches (H. & S. iii. 386) says, ‘Sed nec hoc praetermittendum est, cum necessarium constat aecclesiis Dei, quia Æthelbaldus Rex, pro expiatione delictorum suorum et retributione mercedis aeternae, famulis Dei propriam libertatem in fructibus silvarum agrorumque, sive in caeteris utilitatibus fluminum vel raptura piscium, habere donavit.’
[896] Rectitudines c. 1 (Schmid, App. III.).
[898] Schröder, Die Franken und ihr Recht, Zeitsch. d. Savigny Stiftung, iii. 62–82, has argued that, from the first times of the Frankish settlement onwards, the king has a Bodenregal, an Obereigenthum over all land.
[899] Epistola ad Ecgbertum (ed. Plummer, i. 405).
[900] K. 131 (i. 158).