Bookland (law) - Historical Background

Historical Background

By ancient law and custom, folkland was the only means of holding land in Anglo-Saxon England, and referred to land held by a single person as the representative of a kinship group. Land could be permanently transferred outside of the kinship group, or "alienated", but only with the agreement of the king and the witanagemot. Failing that, land could be transferred only within the kinship group, for example through inheritance.

However, the exact nature of these unwritten ancient customs is not clearly understood, and might include several different types of land tenure, such as kinship holdings intended to remain within the kinship, or holdings of the king to be granted as rewards for service, or holdings of the people as a whole (the "folk") to be granted in their name by the king, or any combination of these.

The concept of bookland entered Anglo-Saxon law in the seventh century via the influence of the late Roman Empire's Vulgar Law, and referred to land that was granted in perpetuity by a charter, and thereafter could be conveyed from anyone to anyone else at will. This was its only practical distinction from "folkland".

The altering of the law to add this concept had its origins in the christianisation of the Anglo-Saxons in the seventh century. As neither the Church nor its clergy could be fitted into the existing laws of land tenure, Anglo-Saxon law added the granting of charters as a means of supporting them. It had been intended as a permanent grant of land for landowners building religious establishments, with the stipulation that the holder must perform road and bridge upkeep and supply men for the fyrd. Though there is evidence that this was not the first charter to be written in Anglo-Saxon England, the earliest surviving genuine charter, in favour of the abbot and monastery at Reculver, in Kent, was granted by King Hlothere of Kent in May 679.

The desirability of possessing unencumbered "bookland" in preference to "folkland" must have been immediately apparent to the laity, as Bede complained in a letter to Archbishop Ecgbert of York in 731, regarding the vast tracts of land acquired by "pretended monks" whose licentious interests were anything but Christian. To begin with, church land under bookright was exempt from taxation and immune from the trimodia necessitas, that is, the upkeep of bridges and fortifications on the land, and the provision of military service, or fyrd. These immunities were removed from church land by the end of the 8th century, perhaps in response to the situation of which Bede complains.

As Anglo-Saxon law evolved, the religious requirement atrophied and was finally discarded, so that bookland resembled full ownership in the modern sense, in that the owner could grant it in his lifetime, in the same manner as he had received it, by boc or book, and also dispose of it by will.