Another cause of the change from this Mark system to the manorial system, the German writers say, was the fact, that these Teutonic village societies, "though their organization can only be described as democratic, appear, nevertheless, to have

< Hist. Inst. 77.

5 Von Slaurer cited by Jtaiue, Vill. Com. 10, with approval, ejlaine's Vill. Com. 143.

HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

generally had an abiding tradition that in some one family, or in some families, the blood which ran in the veins of all the freemen was purest; probably because the direct descent of such family, or families, from a common ancestor was remembered or believed in.

From the members of these families the leader for a military expedition would, as a rule, be chosen, and the power he would thus acquire " would be a combination of political, military, and judicial, power." This leader, " thus taken from the privileged fauiily would have the largest share of the lands appropriated from the conquered village societies; and there is ground for supposing that he was sometimes rewarded by an exceptionally large share of the common land belonging to the society which he headed." Another privilege which the leading family and its chief obtained, was the power " to sever his own plot of land from the rest, and, if he thought fit, to enclose it ; and thus break up or enfeeble that system of common cultivation under rules of obligatory custom which depended mainly on the concurrence of all the villagers." ' Add to this the inherent tendency of the Teutonic mind to the principle of primogeniture, and we have the basis of what is known as the manorial system. Transplanted into England by its early German invaders this inchoate manorial system tojk root and existed under the Saxon domination till the days of Harold.