title="[Pg 46]"/> enfranchisement was the delivery of an arrow, thought to denote the right confined to freemen of bearing arms.

Even a short account of legal symbols would make a very large treatise. Single instances such as the ring, the staff, the glove, and the horn would each furnish material for an elaborate monograph. The theme would call for a discussion of the great war of investitures, and would touch very many points of ecclesiastical, civil, and criminal law and history. The scope of the present unambitious article is only directed to a few illustrations in relation to the transfer of land, the act of divesting the old proprietor and clothing the new with his rights. Although such symbols usually had a connexion with the subject conveyed, there are many types in which that connexion is not readily traceable. Why for example amongst the Saxons should a resignation of all interest in an estate have been made by a gesture with curved fingers? One can understand why a sod should be so often a token, but why does the glove play so large a part in Merovingian and Carolingian conveyancing? Was it, indeed, as German scholars speculate, because the donor metaphorically took it off and the donee put it on, making his the covered hand, the vestita manus, that would defend the land conveyed? How came an eleventh century magnate to attest his renunciation of justiciary rights to a monastery “by cutting off the top of the silk band by which his fur robes were fastened to his breast, and with that segment re-investing three monks therein?” In this case a portion of that silken band was carefully sewn up, as an adminicle of evidence, in the writ recording the transaction. How again came it that a claim of feudal service might be departed from by the delivery and placing of a wand (virgula) upon the altar? All these are much more personal symbols than real. They are mainly guarantees of the grantor’s good faith. They do not seem to be primarily emblems of possession. The contrast between these two classes will be best appreciated by considering types of the latter.

When a purchaser proceeded to set up fresh boundary marks, or to take a spade and dig, or when he received delivery of a sod with grass or shrubbery upon it, or lifted from the ground the charter granted by the seller with amongst other things a sod laid thereon, the act of seisin, the formal occupation is visibly completed. Of this class of symbol, the sod (cespes) is probably the best and most typical for a few words of illustration. We read of litigants laying judicial claim to land in the mall or public court by putting their spears into a sod, representative of the subject in dispute. We hear of the sods being cut in the shape of bricks, and of their being preserved as memorials, with the twigs growing in and incorporated with them. We hear of sods offered on the altar when the grant of land was being made to a church. We hear of transfer from one vassal to another being accomplished by the grantor delivering the sod to the over-lord, and the latter passing it on to the grantee.

Of all the symbols employed in connection with feoffments, however, the rod (festuca) had the widest vogue on the continent. Not that it was restricted to transactions in land; it was a more or less lineal descendant of the Roman stipulation, a contract visibly expressed by the parties breaking a straw between them. Under Charlemagne a renunciation by certain priests was made by them “holding straws in their hands and casting them from them before God and his angels.” Later this appears as a recognised method of renunciation, but with a rod substituted for the straw. In some cases the fact of renunciation is emphasised by the rod being not only thrown to the ground by the resigner, but trodden under foot when there. The rôle of the festuca was peculiarly important amongst the Frankish peoples.[3] Galbert of Bruges, a Flemish twelfth century historian, states that the counts of Flanders gave investitures to their vassals, after receiving their fealty and homage, by a wand (virgula) held in hand, and he has a dramatic passage describing how the people of Bruges, in token of their renunciation of their feudal bond to Hacket the castellan, “picking up bits of stick exfestucated their homage and fealty,” i.e. cast the rods from them, and so doing severed all connexion with their former chief.

In England and in Scotland, this rod symbol (fustis et baculus) also played a large part. Bracton referred it specially to land without houses. Tenure by the verge, a species of copyhold, had its name, we learn from Littleton, from un petite verge, delivered by the old tenant to the steward or bailiff of the manor, who re-delivered it to the new holder. Jordan Fantosme tells us that when Brien, messenger of Ranulf Glanvil, in 1174, announced in Westminster the capture of the Scottish King at Alnwick, Henry II. rewarded him for his good news by handing him a stick (bastuncel), which vested him in ten librates of land. In Scotland the feudal resignation by a vassal to his overlord for the re-investure of a fresh owner was effected by “staff and baton” (fustis et baculus), and references to those symbols occurred in every day conveyancing until far into the present century. Indeed this picturesque ritual was, strictly speaking, not abrogated, although made unnecessary, by the Act 8 and 9 Victoria ch. 35.

The commonest conveyancing symbol for land in England was the formal delivery of turf or twig of the ground conveyed, made by a representative of the grantor, to a representative of the grantee. The most familiar in Scotland was the handing over of “earth and stone.” This latter was the normal form of seisin, and its history goes far back, not only in Scotland, but on the continent as well. A curious Saxon legend attests this. Widukind narrates that some Saxons, having landed from their ships in Thuringia, one of them, wearing a golden torque and bracelets, met a Thuringian, who asked if he would sell his ornaments. The sly Saxon entered into an odd transaction; the Thuringian gave him in exchange for his gold, a lapful of soil. The Thuringians rejoiced exceedingly over the smart bargain their countryman had made, but changed their tune when soon afterwards the Saxons claimed the land as theirs, purchased with their own gold, and by force of arms made good the demand.

Our chronicles have a good many stories about symbols. In the Norman Brevis Relatio, a sketch of the origin of William the Conqueror, is told of his grandfather, Duke Richard the Good, that once when staying at a monastery, after prayer in the morning he laid a spindle on the altar. Upon being asked what it meant, he named the manor which he had by so homely a symbol bestowed for the good of his soul. When the infant William came into the world, it was said,—and afterwards noted as prophetic—that when they laid him down upon some straw, the little hands each clutched a handful. Acquisitive tendencies were foreshadowed! The Roman de Rou tells that in 1066, when William landed in England, he stumbled and fell, an omen which for the moment disconcerted his followers, but rising with a shout, he swore by the splendour of God that with his two hands he had taken possession of the land. Prompt to catch the occasion, one of his men ran forward to a cottage, tore a handful of thatch from the roof, and passed it to his chief, with the cry, “Receive this