I think that upon the whole we must say that in practice the very marked contrast between the general arrangement of the holdings and the Kentish one is more a difference in the way of reckoning than in actual occupation, in legal forms than in economical substance. The general arrangement admitted a certain subdivision under the cover of an artificial unity which found its expression in the settlement of the services and of the relations with the lord[506]. The English case has its parallel on the Continent in this respect. In Alsace, for instance, the holding was united under one 'Träger' or bearer of the manorial duties; but by the side of him other people are found who participate with this official holder in the ownership and in the cultivation[507]. The second system also kept up the artificial existence of the higher units, and obvious interests prevented it from leading to a 'morcellement' of land into very small portions in practice. The economic management of land could not go as far as the legal partition. In practice the subdivision was certainly checked, as in the virgate system, by the necessity of keeping together the cattle necessary for the tillage. Virgates and bovates would arise of themselves: it was not advantageous to split the yoke of two oxen, the smallest possible plough; and co-heirs had to think even more when they inherited one ox with its ox-gang of land. The animal could not be divided, and this certainly must have stopped in many cases the division of land. When the documents speak of plots containing two or three acres, it must be remembered that such crofts and cotlands occur also in the usual system, and I do not see any reason to suppose that the existence of such subdivided rights always indicated a real dispersion of the economic unit: they may have stood as a landmark of the relative rights of joint occupiers. I do not mean to say, of course, that there was no real basis for the very great difference which is assumed by the two ways of describing the tenements. No doubt the hand of the lord lay heavier on the Essex people than on the Kentish men, their occupation and usage of the land was more under the control of the lord, and assumed therefore an aspect of greater regularity and order. Again, the legal privileges of the Kentish people opened the way towards a greater development of individual freedom and a certain looseness of social relations. Still it would be wrong to infer too much from this formal opposition. In both cases the centripetal and the centrifugal tendency are working against each other in the same way, although one case presents the stronger influence of disruptive forces, and the other gives predominance to the collective power. In the history of socage and military tenure the system of unity arose gradually, and without any sudden break, out of the system of division. The intimate connexion between both forms is even more natural in peasant ownership, which had to operate with small