With regard to the first part of this assertion, it will be sufficient to refer to any page of the Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici: it is impossible almost to find a single grant in that collection which does not openly profess to have been made by the king, “cum consilio, consensu et licentia procerum,” or similar expressions. And the necessity for such consent will appear intelligible when we consider that these grants must be understood, either to be direct conversions of folcland (fiscal or public property) into bócland (private estates), beneficiary into hereditary tenure; or, that they contain licences to free particular lands from the ancient, customary dues to the state. In both cases the public revenue, of which king and witan were fiduciary administrators, was concerned: inasmuch as nearly every estate, transferred from folcland to bócland, became just so much withdrawn from the general stock of ways and means. Only in the case where lands were literally exchanged from one category into the other, did the state sustain no loss. Of this we have evidence in a charter of the year 858[565]. The king and Wulfláf his thane exchanged lands in Kent, Æðelberht receiving an estate of five plough-lands at Mersham and giving five plough-lands at Wassingwell. The king then freed the land at Wassingwell in as ample degree as that at Mersham had been freed; that is, from every description of service, or impost, except the three inevitable burthens, of military service, and repair of fortifications and bridges. And having done so, he made the land at Mersham, folcland, i. e., imposed the burthens upon it. ----- Footnote 565: Cod. Dipl. No. 281. -----