of rare occurrence, appears to denote the hill or mound which was the site of the court, and the place where the free settlers met at stated periods to do right between man and man[99]. ----- Footnote 97: For example in Manors, where the territorial jurisdiction of a lord has usurped the place of the old Markmoot, but not availed entirely to destroy the old Mark-rights in the various commons. Footnote 98: Numerous instances may be found in Grimm’s valuable work, Die Deutschen Weisthümer, 3 vols. 8vo. These are the presentments or verdicts of such courts, from a very early period, and in all parts of Germany. It is deeply to be lamented that the _very early_ customs found in the copies of Court Rolls in England have not been collected and published. Such a step could not possibly affect the interests of Lords of Manors, or their Stewards; but the collection would furnish invaluable materials for law and history. We shall have to refer hereafter to the Advocatus or Vogt, the elected or hereditary patron of these and similar aggregations. Footnote 99: Mearcbeorh, the _Mark-hill_, seems too special a name to express some hill or other, which happened to lie in the boundary. A Kentish charter names the gemótbeorh (Cod. Dipl. No. 364. an. 934), but this is indefinite, and might apply to the Shiremoot. ----- It is not at all necessary that these communities should have been very small; on the contrary, some of the Marks were probably of considerable extent, and capable of bringing a respectable force into the field upon emergency: others, no doubt, were less populous, and extensive: but a hundred heads of houses, which is not at all an extravagant supposition, protected by trackless forests, in a district not well known to the invader, constitute a body very well able to defend its rights and privileges.