In all the earlier stages of a nation’s life, before the people have begun to flock into great cities, there is no subject of more vital importance than the relation of the Folk to the Land. In the seventh century in England this was doubtless governed chiefly by old unwritten customs which needed not to be formally enunciated because they were universally understood. Two precious sentences, however, in Ine’s laws give us a glimpse of the agricultural life of that day, and, combined with information drawn from other sources, enable us in some measure to reconstruct the rural community as it then existed. “A ceorl’s homestead[84] should be fenced in, winter and summer. If he be unfenced and his neighbour’s beast rush in by the opening which he has left, he shall receive nothing on account of [the damage done by] that beast, but must drive it out and bear the loss” (§ 40). “If ceorls have a common meadow[85] or other divided land[86] to fence, and some have fenced their portion, others not, and [stray beasts[87]] eat their common arable or pasture, then those who are responsible for the opening shall pay the others who have fenced their portion for the injury that is done and take such compensation as is due from the [owners of the intruding] cattle” (§ 42). This law shows clearly that we are here in presence of an institution, the existence of which is proved by sentences of Tacitus, by charters of Anglo-Saxon kings, by manor-rolls of many succeeding generations down to the very last century, the so-called Open Field System. This system was not socialistic nor what we understand by the word communistic, and yet it may truly be described in terms drawn from the life of to-day as a system which formed “a community of shareholders”.[88] Such a community was settled, by what means, peaceful or warlike, we need not inquire, on some land cleared, perhaps, from the forest where they founded what we should call a village, but what they called a _tun_ or a _ham_,[89] to which they gave the name of their own little tribe or kinship. The memory of the Yslings may have quite died out from suburban Islington, and Birmingham is no longer the little Mercian _ham_ where once the Beormings clustered, but there seems no sufficient reason to doubt that from some such settlements as these sprang the numerous _tons_ and _hams_ which dot the map of England and have given their names to a stalwart progeny in America and at the Antipodes.[90]