"Nearly, if not quite coextensive with the conception of "bocland," says Digby, "was that of allodial land. The term 'alod,' allodial, did not, however, have any necessary reference to the mode in which the owuer.*liip of land had been conferred ; it simply meant, land held in absolute ownership, not in dejiendence upon any other body or person in whom the proprietary rights were supposed to reside, or to whom the possessor of the land

I Digby's Hist. Law of Real Property, Cb. I. Sect. 1. j

was bound to render service." ^ It was another name for 'bocland' and signified that it was devisable by will, and in case of intestacy was divisible among children equally.' It could be freely sold at plea.«ure by its possessor; or its beneficial enjoyment could be granted by him for a longer or shorter term, at the end of which it reverted to him or his heirs ; when this last disposition of it was made it was called "laenland," literally loan land, or in modern parlance leased land.

The success of the Norman Conquest of England changed almost entirely these early allodial tenures. William the Conqueror introduced the military tenure of" Knight-service " or " in chivalry," with all its feudal attributes and exactions, which had come into vogue in the western and southern portions of the European continent. That system with its correlative rights of protection by the King or the lord, and of service as soldiers by the tenants or vassals, carried down through all classes of society from the highest to the lowest, termed the feudal system, thus introduced, became the basis of the English land system and land law. From William of Normandy to Charles the Second, gradually developed in the earliest reigns of the Norman Kings to its fullest extent, its principles governed English land, English law, and Engli>h thought, until the enactment of the statute of 1660 in the twelfth year of Charles the Second abolished feudalism forever, practically restored the old Saxon allodial tenures, and turned to freedom the mind of England.