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Disputes about bocland: the forum for their adjudication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

A. G. Kennedy
A. G. Kennedy
Affiliation:
Annandale, New South Wales
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Extract

It is my purpose in this article to discuss one aspect of land tenure in Anglo-Saxon England. For good reason there has been little enduring agreement among scholars on fundamental tenurial questions, and opinion on issues of interest to legal historians has tended to be cyclical. There are no contemporary manuals on land law, and as legal documents the primary sources are intractable and opaque. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that scholars have held and continue to hold divergent views about the essential incidents that attached to bocland and folcland, the two types of tenure that are usually taken to be comprehensive of all independent landholding in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms after the introduction of written title in the seventh century. At present the most popular explanations of these tenures derive in essence from the thesis set out by Sir Paul Vinogradoff nearly a hundred years ago. Vinogradoff argued that folcland was so called because it was subject to folcriht, the general communal law of the land, and that bocland was land freed by the royal act embodied in the diploma (OE boc) from the constraints and burdens which folcriht imposed. The diploma was thus a kind of private statute in favour of the grantee. The thesis has its difficulties, and few have accepted it without reservation, but alternative views have similarly failed to find wholehearted support.

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Research Article
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Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 14 , December 1985 , pp. 175 - 195
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 ‘Folkland’, EHR 8 (1893), 1–17Google Scholar. For representative modern restatements, see Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford, 1971), pp. 307–12Google Scholar, and Loyn, H. R., Anglo-Saxon England and the Norman Conquest (London, 1962), pp. 170–9.Google Scholar

2 In this article the legal records of the Anglo-Saxons are identified where possible by their numbers in Sawyer, P. H., Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography (London, 1968)Google Scholar. Sawyer lists documents of many different kinds, and the term boc should not be applied to them all (as has been the tendency with the word ‘charter’ in modern scholarship), for the word had technical significance in legal Old English. It was not used in an indiscriminate way for documents of legal import, but was conventionally reserved for the royal diploma. A solemn instrument drawn up for an important ecclesiastic was sometimes called a boc (see, e.g., S 344 and S 1268), and in S 223 the term is used to describe the record of a grant of rights by Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia from c. 883 until 911, and Æthelflæd, ‘Lady of the Mercians’. But the word was never used for less formal vernacular records like wills, short notices of transactions and reports of litigation. These are most often called (ge)writ, or given names appropriate to the matter recorded, and they consistently distinguish themselves from the more exalted documents which created or confirmed land as bocland: see, e.g., S 693, 1105, 1115, 1242, 1391, 1420, 1441, 1460, 1471, 1506, 1510 and 1514. This practice continues right through to the Conquest, and it seems doubtful whether royal writs ever came to replace the boc in its legal functions during the Anglo-Saxon period, although the values placed on different kinds of Anglo-Saxon documents may well have changed after the Conquest; see the references to Edwardian writs in Domesday Book collected in Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. F. E. Harmer (Manchester, 1952)Google Scholar, Appendix IV, pp. 541–5. For the suggestion that the currency of older diplomas and the increasing scarcity of available land may explain the apparent decline in the production of new diplomas in the eleventh century, see Keynes, Simon, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ 978–1016 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 140–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Vinogradoff was in fact reviving a theory about the nature of folcland which was supported by most scholars until the publication of Allen's, JohnInquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal Prerogative (London, 1830)Google Scholar. Allen believed that folcland was land belonging to the folc, that is, land which was in some sense public land. In recent times John, Eric, Land Tenure in Early England (Leicester, 1960)Google Scholar, and Orbis Britanniae (Leicester, 1966)Google Scholar, and Vollrath-Reichelt, Hanna, Königsgedanke und Königtum bei den Anglesachsen bis zur Mitte des 9. Jahrhunderts (Cologne and Vienna, 1971)Google Scholar, have expressed views in some respects similar to those which Allen held. Vollrath-Reichelt, , Königsgedanke und Königtum ’, pp. 214–19Google Scholar, returns also to the opinion of some nineteenth-century scholars that other kinds of tenure were not excluded by the apparently comprehensive juxtaposition of folcland and bocland in the few texts in which the term folcland appears in a tenurial sense. She omits to notice the text discovered and ptd Flower, R., ‘The Text of the Burghal Hidage’, London Med. Stud. 1 (1937), 60–4Google Scholar, in which bocland and folcland together seem quite clearly intended to cover the field. The point is made in a review by Loyn, H. R., Revue d'historie ecclésiastique 68 (1973), 143–5Google Scholar. For general comment on this recent work, see Brooks, Nicholas, ‘Anglo-Saxon Charters: the Work of the Last Twenty Years’, ASE 3 (1974), 211–31, at 222.Google Scholar

4 ‘English Book-Right’, EHR 50 (1935), 1–21.Google Scholar

5 Vinogradoff, ‘Folkland’, p. 6.

6 Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. F. Liebermann (Halle, 1903–1916Google Scholar) II (Glossar), s.v. Bocland (9a–c), Folcland (7), and Gericht (25).

7 Plucknett, T. F. T., ‘Bookland and Folkland’ EconHR 6 (1936), 64–72.Google Scholar

8 See Jolliffe, , Constitutional History of Mediœval England, 4th ed. (London, 1961), p. 74Google Scholar (where he summarizes the conclusions he had drawn in ‘English Book-Righ:’). See also Sayles, G. O., The Medieval Foundations of England, 2nd rev. ed. (London, 1964), p. 208Google Scholar: ‘Bookland had many advantages to give to its recipients: no folk court had any jurisdiction over it, and any discussions concerning it took place before the king and witan who took it under their special care …’ In Lyon, similar vein Bryce, A Constitutional and Legal History of Medieval England (New York and London, 1980), p. 49Google Scholar, assumes an ‘original jurisdiction’ vested in the king and his council to deal with bocland disputes, along with matters concerning exile and treason.

9 John, , Orbis Britanniae, p. 148Google Scholar, says early on in his discussion of the famous suit concerning Helmstan and his land at Fonthill that ‘it was bookland and therefore the suit had to be heard by the king himself - in this instance King Alfred’. Vollrath-Reichelt, , Königsgedanke und Königtum, pp. 209 and 219Google Scholar, cites with apparent approval the remarks of Liebermann on jurisdiction over bocland.

10 For discussion, see below, pp. 190–4.

11 Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 236–8.Google Scholar

12 Ibid. pp. 297–9.

13 S 106 and s 1187 suggest that it may have been a practice for the inheritors of bocland to have their inheritances confirmed and publicized at a royal council. The testator in S 1187 did this twice, apparently in an unsuccessful attempt to forestall litigation in the future; S 1433 records a suit brought to frustrate one of his bequests.

14 In S 1436 an action was brought by Wulfheard, archbishop of Canterbury, against Abbess Cwenthryth, the heir to Cenwulf, king of Mercia 796–821. A meeting at Clofeshoh in 825 found for Wulfheard, but King Beornwulf intervened to impose a settlement.

15 S 1429 (BCS) (= Birch, W. deG., Cartularium Saxonicum, 3 vols. (London, 1885–1893), 156)Google Scholar. The account concerns a dispute between a mother and her daughter over control of a religious house on the river Tillath in Gloucestershire which was brought ‘ad sanctam sacerdotalis concilii synodum’ in 736–7. The court seems to have been an exclusively ecclesiastical one, as Archbishop Nothelm is the only individual member identified in the narrative, and all the subscribers are churchmen. The Latin is poor and sometimes obscure, but it appears that the court felt competent to authorize the production of a replacement for the original diploma, which was wrongfully withheld by the mother from her daughter: ‘… decrevit omne venerabile concilium cum reverentissimo archiepiscopo Nothelmo hanc cartulam donationis vel regum vel supradictæ Dei famuli Dunnan [the original grantee] manifestissime describi’. In later times the replacement of lost or destroyed diplomas required royal approval. S 1439 (BCS 445) contains accounts of suits in 810 and 844 about bequests made by Oswulf, dux and primeps of East Kent, who had left his lands to members of his family for their lives and then to the church. After his death, and after repeated attempts at settlement, a ‘quæstio et contentio magno [sic] circa hereditatem Oswlfi contra uxorem ejus Beornthrythae’ was brought to a court œt Æclea in Kent, which seems again to have been a purely ecclesiastical gathering. Lay presence is not mentioned until the second dispute, heard at Canterbury before a ‘multitudo spiritalium seculariumque personarum’, including King Æthelwulf, where the bequests were defended against a certain other Æthelwulf. This Æthelwulf claimed that Oswulf had sold land now in the possession of various churches in Kent to his father. The claim seems to have been a revival of the earlier one, in which case the earlier court had entertained a suit between two laymen, in the outcome of which the church had only a contingent interest.

16 Liebermann, Gesetze 1, 74.

17 So The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. F. L. Attenborough (Cambridge, 1922), p. 83Google Scholar, in translating the whole chapter: ‘We have further established, that a man who holds land by title-deed, which his kinsmen have left him, shall not be allowed to give it out of his kindred, if there is documentary or [other] evidence that the power to do so is forbidden him by the men who first acquired it, or by those who gave it to him. [And he who contests such an alienation] shall make a declaration to this effect in the presence of his kindred, with the king and bishop as witnesses.’ See also English Historical Documents c. 500–1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, 2nd ed. (London, 1979), p. 415.Google Scholar

18 ‘Das Buchland’, The Collected Papers of Paul Vinogradoff, ed. Louise Vinogradoff (Oxford, 1928) 1, 168–91, at 174Google Scholar, n. 4.

19 Gesetze 11, s.v. Bocland (10c)

20 Keynes, Simon and Lapidge, Michael, Alfred the Great (Harmondsworth, 1983), pp. 168, 309Google Scholar n. 25, incline towards an interpretation along these lines.

21 Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 140Google Scholar. Attenborough, Laws of the Earliest Kings, p. 117, translates as follows: ‘Further, we have declared what [penalty] he is liable to, who withholds from another his rights either in “bookland” or “folkland”. And with regard to the “folkland” [we have declared] that he [the plaintiff] shall appoint a day when he [the defendant] shall do him justice in the presence of the reeve.’

22 Turner, G. J., ‘Bookland and Folkland’, Historical Essays in Honour of James Tail, ed. Edwards, J. G.et al. (Manchester, 1933), pp. 357–86, at 379.Google Scholar

23 S 877.

24 Jolliffe, ‘English Book-Right’, p. 15.

25 The Will of Æthelgifu, ed. D. Whitelock et al. (Oxford, 1968)Google Scholar. Whitelock (Ibid. pp. 22–7) dates the will to between 98; and 1002, and suggests that the dispute may have been brought to court some short time before 956, on the ground that Ælfhere, a thegn involved as oathhelper, may have been the Ælfhere who became ealdorman of Mercia in that year.

26 What the kinsman Eadhelm refused to accept was the cwide, which may have been the will of the husband, as confirmed by the court, or the judgement of the court. The ambiguity makes no difference to my argument.

27 Æthelgifu leaves to one Leofsige ‘ … þæt land æt offanlege 7 eal þæt seo boc tæcþ …’

28 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1939), no. 41 (pp. 84–6Google Scholar). See also Charters of Rochester, ed. A. Campbell, Anglo-Saxon Charters 1 (London, 1973), no. 34 (pp. 47–8).Google Scholar

29 These documents are called libri ecclesiastici iuris in the Latin translation of the account ptd Charters of Rochester, ed. Campbell, no. 34b (pp. 48–50). As Campbell (Ibid. pp. xxvii-xxviii) suggests, the translation was no doubt made after the Conquest. But, although confused about Anglo-Saxon practice with regard to wills, the Norman scribe knew what a boc meant in Old English legal documents.

30 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 69 (pp. 140–2); Charters of Rochester, ed. Campbell, no. 37 (pp. 54–5).

31 In addition to S 1456 and S 1457. see S 1511, the will of Brihtric and Ælfswith, ptd Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. D. Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930), no. 11 (pp. 26–8Google Scholar), with notes at pp. 128–32.

32 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 59(pp. 122–4); Charters of Rochester, ed. Campbell, no. 36 (pp. 53–4).

33 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, p. 384, defines swutelunga in a way that might perhaps exclude the identification of the (land)bec in S 1457 with the swutelunga in S 1456. There is, however, some support elsewhere for the view that the term swutelung could refer to a diploma. S 1524 (Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Whitelock no. 5 (pp. 16–18)) records a grant in reversion to the Old Minster at Winchester with a provision that the boc to the land be handed over to the foundation to swutelunge.

34 Liber Eliensis, ed. E. O. Blake, Camden 3rd ser. 92 (London, 1962), 98–9Google Scholar (bk 11, ch. 25). 1 shall refer again to the Libellus Æthelwoldi, which, although an independent work compiled between 1109 and 113 1 from vernacular material of the tenth century, has been printed only in the form in which it is incorporated in the Liber Eliensis. Despite the views of some early scholars, there is no good reason to doubt the general authenticity of the Libellus; for a discussion of its value for Anglo-Saxon law, see Whitelock's foreward to Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, pp. ix—xviii.

35 The Anglo-Saxons themselves did not often refer to diplomas as chirographa, but it is the usual term in the fabrications of the Historia Crqylandensis, whose author thought that the Normans ‘chirographa chartas vocabant’. See Searle, W. G., Ingulf and the Historia Croylandensis (Cambridge, 1894), pp. 153–92Google Scholar, esp. 155–6.

36 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 83 (pp. 162–4).

37 D. Whitelock has pointed out that chronological difficulties make it likely that the mention of Athelstan at the beginning of the account is a mistake for his predecessor Athulf; see Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, ed. D. Whitelock, 3rd ed. (London, 1963), p. 11Google Scholar, n. 4.

38 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 44 (pp. 90–2).

39 Whitelock, (Anglo-Saxon Wills, pp. 128–9Google Scholar) considers that the court before which the matter was brought was the shire court of Kent. She also makes the point that the proceedings may not have been quite the travesty of justice which the scribe makes them out to be.

40 Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, pp. 80–1 (bk 11, ch. 8).

41 The diploma (S 780) is accepted as genuine by Blake, Ibid. pp. 415–16, citing Whitelock, and by Hart, C. R., The Early Charters of Eastern England (Leicester, 1966), pp. 45–4Google Scholar. This case makes it clear that it is unwise to assume that land was not bocland, simply because no boc is mentioned in the account of a dispute. It would scarcely be reasonable to argue that the dispute was heard at local level because the relevant boc was unavailable to the defendant at the time, for one reason or another, when it was available well over a century later for copying in the Liber Eliensis.

42 This is particularly so as far as the kinds of legal facts which can be gleaned from accounts of disputes are concerned, because so little is known about the legal incidents that attached to land which was not bocland. On how little can be regarded as secure in this area, see the recent candid remarks of Patrick Wormald in The Anglo-Saxons, ed. James Campbell (Oxford, 1982), pp. 95–8.Google Scholar

43 Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 79 (pp. 346–7).

44 The writ claims that the lands were first granted to Westminster by King Edgar, and later held in dependent tenure by a nun, Ælfwynn, who restored them to the monastery in the presence of Queen Edith. Harmer (Ibid. pp. 315–16) thinks that the reference to King Edgar is a suspicious feature of the writ, but she does not doubt that the other events it reports took place. Hart, Charters of Eastern England, pp. 51–2, accepts the writ as genuine.

45 Chronicon Abbatia Rameseiensis, ed. W. Dunn Macray, Rolls Ser. (London, 1886), pp. 78–80Google Scholar. I accept the identification of the place as Wandlebury, near Cambridge, made by Hart, Charters of Eastern England, p. 42.

46 One account in the Libellus Æthelwoldi (Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, pp. 100—1 (bk 11, ch. 27)) shows how diligent Bishop Æthelwold and Abbot Brihtnoth were in securing diplomas to bocland purchased for Ely. King Edgar had sold land to Æthelwold. This land had come to the king by bequest, but Edgar died before the diplomas could be obtained from the kinsmen of the testator, and the whole chapter is devoted to the tactics adopted by the churchmen to get these diplomas.

47 Among all the many disputes given circumstantial reportage in the Libellus Æthelwoldi, suits were brought before a royal council in only two instances; see Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, pp. 79–80, 84–8 (bk 11, chs. 7 and 11). In the former the Ely monks were deprived of the land in dispute, despite the apparent possession of a boc; in the latter no boc is mentioned.

48 Jolliffe based this view partly on the mistaken assumption that it was the bishop who had to be content with the Iæn, but this is not so. At the relevant point the Old English reads: ‘… hy ealle bædon þone biscop eaðmodlice. þæt he geunnan scolde þæt he moste mid bletsunga þæs landes brucan æt Snoddinglande his dæg. 7 se biscop þa þæs getiðode on ealra þæra witena þane þe þær gesomnode wæran. 7 he behet þæs truwan þæt land æfter his dæge unbesacen eode eft into þære stowe þe hit ut alained wæs …’. Robertson (Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 141–5) translates this as follows: ‘… they [translation for ealle omitted] humbly prayed the bishop to allow Leofwine to enjoy the estate at Snodland with his blessing during his lifetime. And the bishop granted this to the gratification of all the councillors who were there assembled, and Leofwine gave his solemn assurance that after his death the estate should revert uncontested to the foundation from which it was leased …’. The sequence of pronouns is confusing, but the reference to the return of the land in the end to the stow from which it was alœned puts the matter beyond doubt.

49 Sometimes a suit about bocland came before the royal council long after the dispute arose, and Jolliffe argued that this was due to the difficulties which the claimants had in obtaining a hearing, because the local courts were not available. In this connection he cites S 1439 and S 1446. The dispute in S 1459 came before the king more than thirty years after it first developed, but it had been heard once already, and the claimant was probably waiting for what he thought were more favourable circumstances before reviving the suit. S. 1446 is ptd Harmer, F. E., Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge, 1914), no. 15 (pp. 25–7Google Scholar). The account concerns a claim brought before the Mercian witan by Wærferth, bishop of Worcester, perhaps in 903. The witan were summoned by Ealdorman Æthelred, and Wærferth says that ‘… we [Wæferth and his predecessors] ne mihton to nanum rihte becuman ǽ Æðelred wæs Myrcna hlaford’. No doubt assuming that Æthelred was acting in a viceregal capacity, Jolliffe associated this statement with jurisdiction, but it would seem unnecessary to do so: the dispute had been running since at least 845, and there must have been numerous occasions since then when it could have been heard before the Mercian witan. It is unlikely that Wærferth was referring to anything more than the practical ability of the ealdorman to enforce a decision.

50 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 66 (pp. 136–8).

51 Jolliffe, ‘English Book-Right’, pp. 17–18.

52 The court told Leofwine that, should he lose the suit, he would have to pay compensation and his wergeld to the king.

53 Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. J. Stevenson, 2 vols., Rolls Ser. (London, 1858) 1, 457–9 and 475.Google Scholar

54 Ibid. p. 475: ‘… and he behaved in a more brazen fashion when he had the landboc, that is, the charter defining the land, in his possession. For he who had a document of this kind in his hands was able to conduct his case the more confidently with regard to land anywhere’. The diploma in question is apparently not S 665, copied into the chronicle-cartulary after the account of the dispute; see Gelling, Margaret, The Early Charters of the Thames Valley (Leicester, 1979), p. 51Google Scholar, where she concludes that S 665 is ‘probably a forgery made in connection with the dispute’.

55 Jolliffe, ‘English Book-Right’, p. 15.

56 S 1404 (Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon, ed. Stevenson 1, 458–9) is probably a Latin translation of a genuine Old English writ. It is ptd Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 3 (p. 131), with comments at pp. 122–3.

57 Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, ch. 1 (Liebermann, Gesetze 1, 444).

58 In his will (S 1507: Harmer, , Select English Historical Documents, no. 11 (pp. 15–19Google Scholar)) King Alfred recalls that he asked the witan to declare the folcriht in order to frustrate claims against his inheritance. This inheritance included estates held by boc, and it may be supposed that the declaration of folcriht was intended to cover these as well as property held in other ways. Among several items written on the last leaves of the York Gospels is a list of the various estates which belonged to Sherburn-in-Elmet in Yorkshire, , beginning, ‘Dis is seo socn into scyreburna mid folcrihte’ (Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 84 (pp. 164–8Google Scholar)). It would seem unlikely that the extensive holdings comprised in this socn could have been accumulated other than through the acquisition of bocland. Long ago Stevenson, W. H., ‘Yorkshire Surveys and other Eleventh-Century Documents in the York Gospels’, EHR 27 (1912), 1–25, at 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, remarked that he was puzzled by the appearance of folcriht in such a context; but, taken to denote a comprehensive legal concept, the term poses no problems of interpretation. A third indication that folcriht was applicable to bocland is found in S 1204 (BCS 519). The diploma survives in its original form, or as an early copy of the original, and is endorsed inter alia: ‘ðer ne gæbyreð an ðam landæ an folcses folcryht to lefænnæ rumæs butan twigen fyt to yfæsdrypæ.’

59 Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 400Google Scholar, prints a collection of formulae for use in the defence of title to land. There can be little doubt that these formulae belong to the ordinary law of the land, applicable in the humbler courts: the first claims possession ‘mid fullan folcrihte’, the fourth declares that no counterclaims have been made ‘on hundrede oððon ahwar on gemote, on ceapstowe oþþe on ciricware …’. The second formula reads: ‘swa ic hit hæbbe, swa hit se sealde, ðe to syllanne ahte, unbryde 7 unforboden’. With insignificant variations this is the same as a statement in S 1447 attributed to Archbishop Dunstan, which he made in apparent anticipation of claims against the bocland estates of Sunbury and Send. The second formula may also lie behind a purported declaration of Ealdorman Æthelwine in the Libellus Æthelwoldi (Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, p. 104 (bk 11, ch. 30)), that he bought land without ‘ostensum aut oppositum, videlicet nee calumpniam nee contradictionem sive defensionem a domino aut a parentibus’; but it is not so certain that the estate in this instance was bocland. It might be noted also in this connection that the defences denied to the bishop of Rochester in S 1457 were those ‘ðe callum leodscipe geseald wats on wedde’.

60 The view that folcland was so called because it was land subject to folcriht is after all a speculative one, for which there is no explicit support in the sources. It involves, in the words of Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 310Google Scholar, ‘a strained interpretation of a simple Old English compound’ and the maintenance of distinctions which must have become increasingly unreal, once holdings in bocland themselves became traditional.

61 The principle that the holder of bocland forfeited it to the king on conviction for a serious offence does not appear in the laws until II Cnut 1 3.1 and 77.1 (Liebermann, , Cesetze 1, 316 and 364Google Scholar), but it was already ancient by then. S 362 is evidence of its operation during the reign of King Alfred.

62 Harding, Alan, The Law Courts of Medieval England (London and New York, 1973), pp. 23–4Google Scholar.

63 The Anglo-Saxons, ed. Campbell, p. 238. This statement suggests that John may have changed his opinion since he wrote Orbis Britanniae. In any event it does not seem to me that S 1445 (Harmer, , Select English Historical Documents, no. 18 (pp. 30–2Google Scholar); English Historical Documents, ed. Whitelock, no. 102 (pp. 544–6)) is entirely sound evidence that kings always heard bocland disputes even in the period up to the reign of Edward the Klder. The way in which the account is presented suggests that King Alfred intervened in the suit against Helmstan only at the request of Ordlaf, and this some time after it had been initiated by Æthelhelm Higa. The endorsement on the document states that Æthelhelm in the end withdrew from the suit in the presence of King Edward at Warminstcr, but this was after Helmstan had been declared a fliema and had had to make his special and personal peace with the king.

64 For close discussion of the evidence and the quite different conclusions which can be drawn, see Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. Harmer, pp. i 27, and Barraclough, G., ‘The Anglo-Saxon Writ’, History 39 (1954), 193–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

65 The outstanding instance of this is represented by IV Edgar (Liebermann, , Gesetze 1, 206–15Google Scholar). Ch. 15.1 of this code directs the production of many copies for distribution to various parts of the kingdom. Lund, N., ‘King Edgar and the Danelaw’, MScand 9 (1976), 181–95, at 183–5Google Scholar, has pointed out that this code has a number of features appropriate to the writ which are absent from other legislation.

66 On this use of seals, see Chaplais, Pierre, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery: from the Diploma to the Writ’, Jnl of the Soc. of Archivists 3 (1966), 160–76 at 167–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Keynes, , Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’, pp. 136–41.Google Scholar

67 1 find it hard to accept the argument of Chaplais, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chancery’, pp. 169–75, that in most cases the writ protocol was used to give written form to oral communications, and that the documents were drawn up afterwards for the recipients. This is clearly not so in some instances, and it seems more likely that, regardless of who was responsible for their physical production, kings in the later tenth century were quite accustomed to send written communications to persons and courts around the kingdom. The use of Old English more generally in administrative and legal documents was certainly more extensive than the comments of Clanchy, M. T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1 joy (London, 1979), pp. 11–17Google Scholar, might suggest: the compilers of the Libellus Æthelwoldi and the Ramsey Chronicle had access to vernacular material, now lost, which alone would be equivalent to a considerable proportion of the material which still survives.

68 The account says that when he found the documents Bishop Godwine ‘ongan ða to specenne on ðæt land. 7 elles for Godes ege ne dorste. oððæt seo spræc wearð þam cynge cuð’. S 1454 contains a direction to the shire court of Berkshire to hear a suit, but the tenurial status of the land in dispute is quite uncertain. S 1077, a writ of King Edward the Confessor issued in 1052 (Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 17(p. 159)) instructs the Norfolk shire court to pronounce judgement against one Semer, who had occupied land at Kirby in Norfolk which Queen Emma had bequeathed to Bury St Edmunds. This land was most probably bocland, but Edward certainly did not intend any ventilation of the issues involved in the dispute, and the direction may well have been just to publicize a decision already made.

69 S 1460 says bluntly that ’… soc Wulfstan 7 his sunu Wulfric on sum þæt land. pa ferde se bisceop to sciregeomote to Wigeranceastre 7 draf þær his spræce’.

70 Another royal endorsement of a local judgement can be seen in S 1090, a writ addressed to the shire court of Kent in the years 1053–61 (Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. Harmer, no. 35 (p. 189)), in which King Edward confirms a judgement of his thegns concerning a bequest of land to Christ Church, Canterbury. The land was probably bocland, and it may reasonably be supposed that the writ was issued at least in part to frustrate objections to the thegns’ decision, but it would seem unwarranted to assume a prior writ authorizing them to make it.

71 Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. Robertson, no. 78 (pp. 150–2).

72 The account says that one of the attendants at the court came on royal business unrelated to the dispute. The outstanding feature of the suit is a nuncupative will by which a mother seems to have disinherited her son, the claimant, in favour of a kinswoman. The practice of making oral testaments before witnesses was a general one, as applicable to bocland as to any other form of property, and there seems to be no compelling reason for identifying the land as folcland.

73 See, e.g., S 1458 and Liber Bliensis, ed. Blake, pp. 98–9 (bk 11, ch. 25). In both accounts the losing party refused to accept the results of due process, and the not entirely credible claim is made that at least a thousand men stood as oathhelpers for the other side.

74 Miller, E., The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely (Cambridge, 1951), p. 74Google Scholar. On occasion the records of litigation seem almost deliberately to foster this impression. S 1408 (Kemble, J. M., Codex Diplomatics Aevi Saxonici, 6 vols. (London, 1839–1848)Google Scholar, no. 805) purports to come from the episcopacy of Ealdred of Worcester (1044–62). It can hardly be authentic as it stands, but its account of a suit against Ealdred is paradigmatic, involving as it does a claim by a son to land which his father had bequeathed to the bishop, and this part of the document may well contain authentic material. The land was no doubt bocland - it was held ‘iure haereditariae successions’ and free from all secular burdens except what the whole nation owed to the king — although there is no reference to a boc and the testamentum is treated as the critical document. Ealdred was forced to an unfavourable settlement at a meeting which appears to have been at once local and royal: the settlement was concluded ‘fauente et consentiente ipso domino meo rege, et Leofrico comite, et caeteris optimatibus huius prouinciae attestantibus’. The Libellus Æthelwoldi (Liber Eliensis, ed. Blake, pp. 107–8 (bk 11, ch. 33)) records that Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, known otherwise to exercise authority only in Huntingdon-shire and in Essex, summoned an opponent to a court at Fen Ditton, near Cambridge. Whitelock (Lber Eliensis, ed. Blake, p. xiii) takes this to be a private court, but it may well have been an ad hoc gathering convened specifically to make things difficult for the defendant. Certainly questions of jurisdiction would seem to have been irrelevant. The defendant, not surprisingly, was unable to gather sufficient oathhelpers; he was a priest, who had apparently been dealing on equal terms with the ealdorman; the land in dispute lay some miles away at Horningsea; lagamen were in attendance; and the case was afterwards rehearsed or publicized (‘alia vice statutum erat’) at Cambridge. I should like to thank Dr Simon Keynes for reading earlier drafts of this article and for suggesting numerous improvements.