[1191] Meitzen, op. cit. i. 573.
[1192] Ibid. i. 122–60.
[1193] Therefore its assembly is a Holtding, and a Holzgraf presides there: Meitzen, op. cit. i. 125.
[1194] D. B. ii. 339 b: ‘In hundret de Coleness est quedam pastura communis omnibus hominibus de hundret.’ At Rhuddlan (D. B. i. 269) Earl Hugh has given to Robert half the castle, half the burg, and ‘half of the forests which do not pertain to any vill of the said manor.’ This, however, is in Wales.
[1195] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 608.
[1196] Ibid. i. 547.
[1197] Blomefield, Hist. Norfolk, iv. 691 gives an account of an extremely fertile tract of pasture known as Tilney Smeeth upon which the cattle of seven ‘towns’ intercommoned.
[1198] If we are right in supposing that very generally a royal land-book disposes of a whole village, then if it proceeds to give rights in the communis silva, it is probably speaking of a wood that is not regarded as annexed to that village but of one which is common to various villages. The intercommoning of vills in a forest is illustrated by the famous Epping case, Commissioners of Sewers v. Glasse, Law Reports, 19 Equity, 134. But for the king’s rights in forest land, a ‘mark community’ might have grown up in Epping. On the other hand, but for the king’s rights, the land might long ago have been partitioned among the mark-men.
[1199] The word tenement will be often employed hereafter. Has it become needful to protest that a tenement need not be a house? If my body is my soul’s ‘frail tenement,’ that is not because my body holds my soul (a reprobate error), but because (for this is better philosophy and sound law) my soul holds my body. But, to descend from these heights, it will be a thousand pities if a vulgar blunder compels us to abandon the excellent tenement in favour of the feeble holding or the over-worked estate.
[1200] Hist. Eccl. lib. 4, c. 21 (23), ed. Plummer, i. 253.