charters the land is wholly enfranchised: by others partially; by some gratuitously, and in reward of services already performed: by others in return for an equivalent given at the time, in lands or money. The more ancient enfranchisements are termed grants of church right, or church freedom: an argument that they were confined exclusively to grants for religious purposes: they even retained that appellation for a long time after they became common to lay and church property; nor was the distinguishing adjunct of church totally dropped before the beginning of the ninth century. It cannot, however, have been, as sometimes is stated, that enfranchisement was essential to the creation of boclands, or estates of inheritance: for we have numbers of charters creating such estates without a word of enfranchisement, and others granting enfranchisement to such estates long after they had been created.2

1 See grants of jus ecclesiasticum to laymen, Cod. Dipl. i. 123, 154, 159, 169, 174, &c.; but after the year 800, we generally meet with the Latin word "libertas," or the Saxon "freodom," without the adjunct.

? See charters of bocland without enfranchisement (Cod. Dipl. i. 137, 152, 191, 211, 216). Cœnulf of Mercia had unjustly taken possession of lands belonging to the see of Canterbury. In 825, at Cloveshoe, the witan, under King Beornalf, decreed that Cwondrythe, the daughter and heiress of Cœnulf, should restore those lands to Archbishop Wulfred. Cwondrythe and her kinsfolk claimed the protection of the king, who prevailed with great difficulty on the archbishop to accept, in lieu of the original lands, four other parcels of land, the property of Cwondrythe, amounting to 100 folclands; and, as only one of these parcels had hitherto been enfranchised, granted the same benefit to the other three, that they might be worth the acceptance of Wulfred. Cum consilio ejusdem synodi illam terram, quæ non fuerat antea liberata hujus præ

In

In 854 was passed a general measure of partial enfranchisement for the kingdom of Wessex. that year, at Wilton, in the presence of the witan, King Ethelwulf signed a charter, stating that, “for the benefit of his soul, the prosperity of his kingdom, and the safety of his people, he, with the advice of his bishops, earls, and great men, had come to the resolution of freeing for ever the tenth part of the lands throughout the kingdom (not only those belonging to the churches, but also to his thanes) from all secular services and burthens; and that in return for this grant, Alstan, bishop of Sherborne, and Swithin, bishop of Winchester, had engaged that certain religious services should be weekly performed on the Saturday for the benefit of the king, and of the great men, subscribers to the charter."1 From the mention of the two West-Saxon bishops, we may infer that this grant concerned the kingdom of Wessex alone. But the next year, just before his pilgrimage to Rome, on Nov. 5th, at Winchester, in the church

dictæ donationis, eadem libertate liberabat, sicut et altera terra æt Hearge jamdudum liberata fuerat, et in altera charta conscripta habetur. (Ib. i. 282.) In vol. ii. 256, King Edmund, in 945, appears to enfranchise, in favour of Bishop Alfred, an estate in land, which he and his predecessors had long possessed as belonging to the bishopric. In the same volume, p. 111, Ethelred frees the abbey of Berkley from some services of which it had formerly been left unfreed.'

1 Pro meæ remedio animæ et regni prosperitate, et populi mihi collati salute, consilium salubre cum episcopis, comitibus, et cunctis optimatibus meis perfeci, ut decimam partem terrarum per regnum, non solum sanctis ecclesiis darem, verum etiam ministris nostris in eodem constitutis in perpetuam libertatem concederem, ita ut talis donatio fixa incommutabilisque permaneat, ab omni regali servitio, et sæcularium absoluta servitute. Cod. Dipl. ii. 51, 52.

of St. Peter, before the high altar, and in the presence of the kings of Mercia and East-Anglia,' and of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, abbesses, ealdormen, thanes, and lieges of the land, he subscribed a second charter of the same tenour, in which, having observed that they lived in times of alarm and peril, from the repeated descent of the northern pirates, he states that it has been resolved by the witan to solicit the protection of God, and that, with that view, he has granted the immunities of holy church to a certain portion of the lands of inheritance in the possession of persons of all ranks, whether they be men or women, servants of God, or lay thanes; that is, to every tenth mansion, or, where there are not ten mansions, to the tenth part of the whole, so that they may be exempt from all secular services, all rents to the king, great or small, and all the taxations called witerden, in order that the holder may pray for him with less interruption, inasmuch as he has eased them of a part of their servitude.2

There can be no doubt that the owners of land would be careful to avail themselves of the benefits held out to them by this charter: and, from docu

1 This would justify the inference that by this charter the grant was extended to those kingdoms; but its accuracy may be doubted, as the presence of these kings is omitted in Malmesbury's copy. Malm. i. 170.

2 Ut aliquam portionem terrarum hæredetariam, antea possidentibus omnibus gradibus, sive famulis et famulabus Dei Deo servientibus, sive laicis miseris (ministris, in the other copy), semper decimam mansionem, ubi minimum sit tamen partem decimam, in libertatem perpetuam donari dijudicavi, ut sit tuta et libera ab omnibus, &c. (Malms. i. 170; Cod. Dipl. ii. 56.) There are several copies in different writers, all incorrect by themselves, but easily corrected from each other.

ments which have descended to us, it would appear that they procured from the king copies of the original charter, with an additional clause containing the metes and bounds of the lands in their possession to which its provisions extended. It is manifest that this grant must have been a considerable sacrifice on the part of the king. Still it applied only to one-tenth part of the lands previously unenfranchised: the other nine parts remained subject to the same charges as before; and the purchase of charters of enfranchisement from the sovereign continued in full practice during the remainder of the Saxon times.

See a copy obtained by the thane Wiferth for the enfranchisement of one Cassata, ibid. 51; another by the monks of Malmesbury, ibid. 52; and a grant to the thane Dunne pro decimatione agrorum, quam, Deo donante, cæteris ministris meis facere decrevi, ibid. 57. I am aware that this grant by Ethelwulf has been very differently explained by several writers: but it is plainly a general grant of immunity to actual possessors of boclandportionem hereditariam antea possidentibus-and every reader accustomed to ancient charters will recognize in it the language of charters of enfranchisement. I may add that Asser, who wrote in the court of Ethelwulf's son Alfred, describes it in the same sense, as a charter of enfranchisement. "He freed the tenth part of his whole kingdom from all rents and services to the king, and with the signature of the cross of Christ offered it a sacrifice to the Tri-une God for the redemption of his soul, and of the souls of his ancestors." Decimam totius regni sui partem ab omni regali tributo et servitio liberavit, sempiternoque graphio in cruce Christi pro redemptione animæ suæ et antecessorum suorum uni et trino Deo immolavit. (Asser, 8.) The only doubt, it appears to me, is, whether it extended to the tenth of all lands not hitherto enfranchised, or was confined to those whose enfranchised lands did not comprise one-tenth part of their property.

II. The exemption from these burthens led the way to the possession of privileges still more honourable and profitable. It was natural that the prince who founded a church or monastery should seek to display his munificence, and should look on the benefits and distinctions which he lavished on its inmates as reflecting a lustre on their benefactor. The superior, the representative of the body, was frequently invested by him with some of the rights of royalty, such as that of receiving toll on the transport of merchandize through his domain, of levying bots or fines for every breach of the peace, of determining civil suits among his vassals, of pursuing the thief beyond his boundary, and of trying a multitude of offences within his own courts. That the prin

cipal spiritual thanes enjoyed these privileges no less that the secular thanes, cannot be doubted: but in what manner were they conveyed to the possessors? Among the multitude of charters, which have reached us, there are very few indeed to be found containing any mention of such rights, or any transfer of them from the crown to the grantee.2 To me the follow

1 Cod. Dip. i. 293, 298; ii. 79. Wilk. 157.

So we are assured by Mr. Kemble in his valuable remarks on the subject (Introd. to Cod. Dipl. i. p. xliii.). We have, indeed, charters pretending to be of higher date than the reign of Edward the Confessor, and conveying those privileges under the well-known formula of Sac and Soc, Grithbrice and Burhbrice, Toll and Team, &c. But they were manifestly fabricated after the conquest; not, I. conceive, for the purpose of establishing new and unfounded claims, but of protecting old and undoubted rights against the cavils of the Norman lawyers. There is, however, a direct grant of royal privileges in the charter of Alfred, which he made to the church of Shaftesbury, when his daughter Agelyve entered that convent; a grant of 100