Navigation

Search
Reset
Old English Characters:
Alphabet: All A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Displaying 1 glossary term in Land Tenure & Law starting with F

Folcland (Folkland)

OE folcland ('land of the folk / customary land')

Land held according to the traditional unwritten customary law of the folk, subject to heavy royal food-rents (*feorm*), purveyance, and family reversionary claims.

Unlike bookland, folkland could not be freely willed outside the kindred or alienated to ecclesiastical foundations without royal conversion into bookland.

“The contrast between folcland and bocland governed pre-Conquest land tenure debate from John Allen and F. W. Maitland to modern scholarship.”
S 287 — Royal Conversion of Folkland Read in charter →