But from the nature of the case it was inevitable that the area of folkland or royal demesne must constantly be lessened as each succeeding grant increased the area of the _boc-land_. In other words, to use the later phrase, the tendency was not only for new [p169] manors to be created out of the royal forests and wastes, but also for more and more of the royal manors to pass from the royal demesne into private hands. «King Alfred's sketch of the growth of a new _ham_.» Now there is a remarkable passage in one of King Alfred's treatises[197] which incidentally throws some light upon this process, and explains the way in which new manors may have been created. He describes how the forest or a great wood provided every [p170] requisite of building, shafts and handles for tools, bay timbers and bolt timbers for house-building, fair rods (_gerda_) with which many a house (_hus_) may be constructed, and many a fair _tun_ timbered, wherein men may dwell permanently in peace and quiet, summer and winter, which, writes the king with a sigh, 'is more than I have yet done!' There was, he said, an eternal '_ham_' above, but He that had promised it through the holy fathers might in the meantime make him, so long as he was in this world, to dwell softly in a log-hut on _lænland_ ('_lænan stoclif_'[198]), waiting patiently for his eternal inheritance. So we wonder not, he continued, that men should work in timber-felling and in carrying and in building,[199] for a man hopes that if he has built a cottage on lænland of his lord, with his lord's help, he may be allowed to lie there awhile, and hunt and fowl and fish, and occupy the _læn_ as he likes on sea and land, until through his lord's grace he may perhaps some day obtain _boc-land_ and permanent inheritance. Then finally he completes his parable by reverting once more to the contrast between 'thissa lænena stoclife' and '_thara ecena hama_'--between the log hut on lænland and the permanent freehold '_ham_' on the _boc-land_, or hereditary manorial estate. It is true that in this passage King Alfred does not suggest distinctly that the lord would make the actual holding of lænland into boc-land, thus converting a clearing in his forest into a new manor for his thane; but, on the other hand, there was a good reason [p171] for this omission, seeing that such a suggestion would have just overreached the point of his parable. Be this as it may, the vivid little glimpse we get into the _modus operandi_ of the possible growth of a Saxon manorial estate, out of folkland granted first as _lænland_, and then as _boc-land_, or out of the woods or waste of an ealdorman's domain, may well be made use of to illustrate the matter in hand. «The _rod_, _gyrd_, or _virga_ in the growth of a new _ham_.» The typical importance in so many ways of the _gyrd_, or _rod_, or _virga_ in the origin and growth of the Saxon 'tun' or 'ham' is worth at least a moment's notice.