26 English and Continental Backgrounds
holders, there is no proof that they could will their land.
With bookland,1 which signified fully as much a kind of
right over the people on the land as of proprietorship in
the land, all was different; the holder could often sell,
lease, or will. But bookland was in its early stages
when the Norman Conquest interrupted. Rules of land
inheritance varied, and there are instances of almost every
kind; but equal division among sons was commonest.2
While it may be said that these Anglo-Saxons enjoyed
the freedom of living under a law which they themselves
had made—whether we are thinking of the scanty rules
of substantive law or their more elaborate law of court
procedure—a law that had not been imposed upon them
by any despotic central power, yet the rigid formalism
which they had developed was in itself a tyranny and
often defeated the ends of real justice. They were very
ready to accept something better when, after the Norman
Conquest, the king opened his own court to them.3
In concluding the account of hundred and shire organi-
sation, something further must be said of the shire's two
most prominent officials, the ealdorman and the sheriff.
The ealdorman was theoretically an appointee of the
king; he had a distinctly official character, and might be
placed over a single shire or several shires, the latter being
usually the case. He was the shire's chief man, com-
manding its military force and having the position in its
court already described. But when ealdormen are first
heard of, they were making successful attempts to render
their positions hereditary, and were identifying themselves
with the interests of their localities rather than with those
of the king. As the king's dominion approximated all
England under Alfred's descendants, the ealdormen cov-
eted corresponding extension of territory. They sought
* See below, pp. 39-42.
2 See Pollock, Anglo-Saxon Law, Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal
History, i., 88 ff.
s For some documentary material on the early hundred and shire courts
see Translations and Reprints (English Constitutional Documents) DO'
20-22. *^'