shire-motes, but of his own dependents, the ealdormen, the bishops, and a certain number of thegns whose name, meaning 'servants', implied at least at first, that they either were or had at one time been in some way in the employment of the king. ... The necessities of war ... combined with the sluggishness of the mass of the population to favour the growth of a military force, which would leave the tillers of the soil to their own peaceful occupations. As the conditions which make a standing army possible on a large scale did not yet exist, such a force must be afforded by a special class, and that class must be composed of those who either had too much land to till themselves, or, having no land at all, were released from the bonds which tied the cultivator to the soil, in other words, it must be composed of a landed aristocracy and its dependents. In working out this change, England was only aiming at the results which similar conditions were producing on the Continent. But just as the homogeneousness of the population drew even the foreign element of the church into harmony with the established institutions, so it was with the military aristocracy. It grouped itself round the king, and it supplemented, instead of overthrowing, the old popular assemblies. Two classes of men, the eorls and the gesiths, had been marked out from their fellows at the time of the conquest. The thegn of Edgar's day differed from both, but he had some of the distinguishing marks of either. He was not like the gesith, a mere personal follower of the king. He did not, like the eorl, owe his position to his birth. Yet his relation to the king was a close one, and he had a hold upon the land as firm as that of the older eorl. He may, perhaps, best be described as a gesith, who had acquired the position of an eorl without entirely throwing off his own characteristics. ... There can be little doubt that the change began in the practice of granting special estates in the folkland, or common undivided land, to special persons. At first this land was doubtless held to be the property of the tribe. [This is now questioned by Vinogradoff and others. See FOLCLAND.] ... When the king rose above the tribes, he granted it himself with the consent of his Witan. A large portion was granted to churches and monasteries. But a large portion went in privates estates, or book land, as it was called, from the book or charter which conveyed them to the king's own gesiths, or to members of his own family. The gesith thus ceased to be a mere member of the king's military household. He became a landowner as well, with special duties. to perform to the king. ... He had special jurisdiction given him over his tenants and serfs, exempting him and them from the authority of the hundred mote, though they still remained,