Provisional Drogereit pdf

4. (p. 406) Folk-land yielded income as the land was nationally owned, with no
individual having inalienable right of special usafrucht 157 .
The term Ethel was thus dropped, and in its place the name Family-land appeared,
also not passed on through the sources; it was, however, significant that Lodge made a
clear distinction between two main genres, book-owned land and land owned under
the common law. He had no name for the latter, but held on to his Folk-land term with
ager publicus. Vinogradoff finally did away with this tradition, (which, in our opinion,
had not only scientific research to thank for its origin, but also political thinking).
However, when he drew on Brunner’s research on the Landboc to interpret the
sections that mentioned Folkland, he found that there were only two types of private
ownership, namely:
1. Land that was held under “common law” and was therefore subject to ties,
which tended to allow it to be seen as a family estate i.e. Folk-land
2. Land possessed under book law and thus privileged as a product of Roman
law and religious practice with the decisive characteristic of freedom of disposal.
The competent Court of Justice in such disputes over Folk-land was the Shire gemot,
while for Bocland no appeal was necessary, as the action went straight before the
king 158 .
Folk-land is therefore the undocumented land ownership under common law, with
either limited or no freedom of disposal. To ensure above all that the existing owner
had right of disposal of the land, the book was used to release the land from its
common law ties 159 . – The most common form of privilege (the book) then appeared
as a change from common law land ownership into individual ownership, under the
collaboration of the King and Witan 160 .
With respect to land already registered in the book, the owner – for our consideration
the king, who can even call Bookland his own – can dispose of it without further
authorisation 161 , either via the liber antiquus or by means of a new charter 162 .
157
H. C. Lodge, The Anglo-Saxon Land-Law, in Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, Boston 1876, p. 57 ff.,
68 ff.
158 P. Vinogradoff, Folkland p. 97 ff. And Buchland (Bocland) I, 168 ff. In particular pp. 177 and 172.
159 P. Vinogradoff, Buchland p. 174.
160 P. Vinogradoff, Folkland p. 105.
161 P. Vinogradoff, Buchland p. 186.
162 H. Brunner, Zur Rechtsgeschichte (Legal History) p. 175 ff.
406