Formerly, while there were many petty kings in England, and before the kingship had attained its unity and its full growth, _i.e._ before it had, as we are told by historians, absorbed in itself exclusively the sole representation of the nation, the term _folkland_ was apparently applied to all that was afterwards included in the royal demesne. All that had not become the _boc-land_ or private property either of members of the royal house or of a monastery or of a private person was still folkland. And it would appear that the kings had originally no power to alienate this folkland without the consent of the great men of their witan. But inasmuch as the royal demesne or folkland included an endless number of manors as well as forest, it cannot properly be said that it was necessarily extra-manorial. More correctly it was in the manor of the king. The king was its manorial lord, and the _geburs_ and cottiers upon it were _geneats_ or _villani_ of the king. The Tidenham and Hysseburne manors were both of them manors of the royal demesne until they were granted by charter to their new monastic owners. Now, it is clear that in the course of time, after that in a similar way grant after grant had been made of 'ham' after 'ham,' with its little territory--its _ager_ or _agellus_, or _agellulus_, as the ecclesiastical writers were wont to describe it in the charters--to the king's thanes or to monasteries, as _boc-land_ or private estate, the number of 'hams' still remaining folkland would grow less and less. [p168] «These were granted as lænland to thanes in reward for services.» In the meantime the royal forests were managed by royal foresters under separate laws and regulations of great severity, whilst the royal _hams_ or manors were put under the management of a resident steward, _præpositus_ or _villicus_--in Saxon '_tun-gerefa_,'--or were let out for life as _lænland_ to neighbouring great men or their sons, or to thanes in the royal service. This granting of life-leases of folkland or _hams_ on the royal demesne seems to have been a usual mode of rewarding special military services, and Bede bitterly complained that the profuse and illegitimate grants which were wheedled out of the king for pretended monastic purposes had already in his time seriously weakened the king's power of using the royal estates legitimately as a means of keeping up his army and maintaining the national defences.[195] To be able to provide some adequate maintenance for the thanes, on whose services he relied, was a king's necessity; for well might King Alfred enforce the truth of the philosophy of his favourite Boethius by exclaiming that every one may know how 'full miserable and full unmighty' kings must be who cannot count upon the support of their thanes.[196] «Tendency for them to pass into private hands.»