the King was deemed an extraordinary resource to be justified only
by some extraordinary emergency, to buy off the Danes or to hire
soldiers against them. Men long after still dreamed that the King
could "live of his own," that he could pay all expenses of his
court and government out of the rents and services due to him as a
landowner, without asking his people for anything in the character
of sovereign. Demands of money on behalf of the King now became
both heavier and more frequent. And another change which had long
been gradually working now came to a head. When, centuries later,
the King was bidden to "live of his own," men had forgotten that
the land of the King had once been the land of the nation. In all
Teutonic communities, great and small, just as in the city
communities of Greece and Italy, the community itself was a chief
landowner. The nation had its folkland, its ager publicus, the
property of no one man but of the whole state. Out of this, by the
common consent, portions might be cut off and booked--granted by a
written document--to particular men as their own bookland. The
King might have his private estate, to be dealt with at his own
pleasure, but of the folkland, the land of the nation, he was only
the chief administrator, bound to act by the advice of his Witan.
But in this case more than in others, the advice of the Witan could
not fail to become formal; the folkland, ever growing through
confiscations, ever lessening through grants, gradually came to be
looked on as the land of the King, to be dealt with as he thought
good. We must not look for any change formally enacted; but in
Edward's day the notion of folkland, as the possession of the
nation and not of the King, could have been only a survival, and in
William's day even the survival passed away. The land which was
practically the land of King Edward became, as a matter of course,
Terra Regis, the land of King William. That land was now enlarged