ancestor, the patronymic being formed by the addition of the syllable ing.  Thus the descendants of AElla would be called AEllings, and their ham or stockade would be known as AEllingaham, or in modern form Allingham.  So the tun or enclosure of the Culmings would be Culmingatun, similarly modernised into Culmington.  Names of this type abound in the newer England at the present day; as in the case of Birmingham, Buckingham, Wellington, Kensington, Basingstoke, and Paddington.  But while in America the clearing is merely a temporary phase, and the border of forest is soon cut down so as to connect the village with its neighbours, in the old Anglo-Saxon fatherland the border of woodland, heath, or fen was jealously guarded as a frontier and natural defence for the little predatory and agricultural community.  Whoever crossed it was bound to give notice of his coming by blowing a horn; else he was cut down at once as a stealthy enemy.  The marksmen wished to remain separate from all others, and only to mix with those of their own kin.  In this primitive love of separation we have the germ of that local independence and that isolated private home life which is one of the most marked characteristics of modern Englishmen.

In the middle of the clearing, surrounded by a wooden stockade, stood the village, a group of rude detached huts.  The marksmen each possessed a separate little homestead, consisting usually of a small wooden house or shanty, a courtyard, and a cattle-fold.  So far, private property in land had already begun.  But the forest and the pasture land were not appropriated:  each man had a right from year to year to let loose his kine or horses on a certain equal or proportionate space of land assigned to him by the village in council.  The wealth of the people consisted mainly in cattle which fed on the pasture, and pigs turned out to fatten on the acorns of the forest:  but a small portion of the soil was ploughed and sown; and this portion also was distributed to the villagers for tillage by annual arrangement.  The hall of the chief rose in the midst of the lesser houses, open to all comers.  The village moot, or assembly of freemen, met in the open air, under some sacred tree, or beside some old monumental stone, often a relic of the older aboriginal race, marking the tomb of a dead chieftain, but worshipped as a god by the English immigrants.  At these informal meetings, every head of a family had a right to appear and deliberate.  The primitive English constitution was a pure republican aristocracy or oligarchy of householders, like that which still survives in the Swiss forest cantons.