The typical site for a new settlement was a clearing in a wood or forest, because of the 'fair rods' which there abound. The clearing was measured out by rods. An allusion to this occurs in Notker's paraphrase of Psa. lxxviii. 55--'He cast out the heathen before them, and divided them an inheritance by line.' The Vulgate which Notker had before him was 'Et sorte divisit eis terram in funiculo distributionis;' and he translated the last clause thus--'teilta er daz lant mit mazseile,'--to which he added, '_also man nu tuot mit_ RUOTO,' as they now do it with _rods_, _i.e._ at St. Gall in the tenth or eleventh century.[200] So in England the typical holding in the cleared land of the open fields was called _yard_-land, or in earlier Saxon a _gyrd_ landes, or in Latin a _virgata_ terræ; _yard_, _gyrd_, and _virga_ all meaning _rod_, and all meaning also in a secondary sense a yard measure. The holdings in the open fields were of _yarded_ or [p172] _rooded_ land--land measured out with a rod into acres four rods wide, each _rod_ in width being therefore a _rood_, as we have seen. Again, the whole homestead was called a _tun_ or a _worth_, because it was _tyn_ed or _gird_ed with a wattled fence of _gyrds_ or rods. And so, too, in the Gothic of Ulfilas the homestead was a '_gard_.' So that in the evident connexion of these words we seem to get confirmation of the hint given by King Alfred of the process of the growth of new manors. «It begins with a clearing in the forest.» The young thane, with his lord's permission, makes a clearing in a forest, building his log hut and then other log huts for his servants. At first it is forest game on which he lives. By-and-by the cluster of huts becomes a little hamlet of homesteads. He provides his servants with their outfits of oxen, and they become his _geburs_. The cleared land is measured out by rods into acres. The acres ploughed by the common plough are allotted in rotation to the yard-lands. A new hamlet has grown up in the royal forest, or in the outlying woods of an old _ham_ or manor. In the meantime the king perhaps rewards his industrious thane, who has made the clearing in his forest, with a grant of the estate with the village upon it, as his boc-land for ever, and it becomes a manor, or the lord of the old manor of which it is a hamlet grants to him the inheritance, and the hamlet becomes a subject manor held of the higher lord. So we seem now to see clearly how new _tuns_ and _hams_ or manors were always growing up century after century, on the royal demesne and on private estates or manors, as in a former chapter it became [p173] clear incidentally how new geburs with fresh yard-lands could be added to the village community, and the strips which made up the yard-lands intermixed with those of their neighbours in the village fields. X. THE LAWS OF KING ETHELBERT--THERE WERE MANORS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY. «_Tuns_ and _hams_ in the time of Ethelbert,»