The king, like all other freemen, was a landed possessor, and depended for much of his subsistence upon the cultivation of his estates[279]. In various parts of the country he held lands in absolute property, furnished with dwellings and storehouses, in which the produce of his farms might be laid up, and from one to another of which he proceeded, as political exigencies, caprice, or the consumption of his hoarded stock rendered expedient. In each villa or wíc was placed a bailiff, _villicus_, _wícgeréfa_, whose business it was to watch over the kings interests, to superintend the processes of husbandry, and govern the labourers employed in production; above all to represent the king as regarded the freemen and the officers of the county court. ----- Footnote 279: “De victu ex regis praediis.” “Ðis is ðonne seó lihtingc ðe ic wylle eallon folce gebeorgan ðe hig ǽr ðyson midgedrehte wǽron ealles tó swýðe. Dæt is ðonne ǽrost. ðæt ic bebeóde eallum mínan geréfan ðæt hi on mínan ágenan rihtlíce tilian ⁊ me mid ðám feormian. ⁊ ðæt him nán man ne þearf tó feormfultume nán þingc syllan bútan he sylf wille. And gif hwá æfter ðám wíte crafige beó he his weres scyldig wið ðone cyningc.” Cnut, § lxx. Thorpe, i. 412, 413. “I command all my reeves that they justly provide [for me] out of my own property, and maintain me therewith; and that no man need give me anything as farm-aid (feormfultum) unless he himself be willing.” We here witness the natural progress of oppression. The lot, share, or, as we may call it, τεμενος of the king, though thus divided, was extensive, and comprised many times the share of the freeman. We may imagine that it originally, and under ordinary circumstances would be calculated upon the same footing as the wergyld; that if the life of the king was seventy-two times as valuable as that of the ceorl, his land would be seventy-two times as large; if the one owned thirty, the other would enjoy 2160 acres of arable land. But the _comitatus_ offers a disturbing force, which, it will hereafter be seen, renders this sort of calculation nugatory in practice; and the experience of later periods clearly proves the king to have been a landowner in a very disproportionate degree. In addition to the produce of his own lands, however, the king was entitled to expect voluntary gifts in kind, _naturalia_, from the people, which are not only distinctly stated by Tacitus[280] to have been so given, but are frequently referred to by early continental historians[281]. In process of time, when these voluntary gifts had been converted into settled payments or taxes, further voluntary aids were demanded, upon the visit of a king to a town or country, the marriage of a princess, or of the king himself, and other public and solemn occasions; from which in feudal times arose the custom of demanding aids from the tenants to knight the lord’s son or marry his daughter. ----- Footnote 280: