Folcland

Folcland, or Folkland, in early English history, the public land of the nation, originally the remainder after provision had been made for each family and township. It was under the control of the king, subject to the counsel and consent of the Witan. Large grants of it were made in course of time, both to the monasteries and to the "new nobility "of thegns, and leases were granted which eventually gave rise to prescriptive rights over it. At the Norman Conquest it became the king's land, and was confounded with his private property. Its existence was doubtless a survival from the time when land was corporate property only, and the idea of individual ownership had not yet developed. There were analogies to it in early Germany, in medieeval Switzerland, in early Greece, and more particularly in the cvger public us at Rome. But in the continental states of early medieeval Europe it was not generally distinguished from the king's land.