A border.
See MARCH, MARK.
MARK, The.
"The theory of the Mark, or as it is more generally called in
its later form, the free village community, has been an
accepted hypothesis for the historical and economic world for
more than half a century. Elaborated and expanded by the
writings of Kemble in England and v. Maurer in Germany, taken
up by later English writers and given wide currency through
the works of Sir Henry Maine, Green, and Freeman, it has been
accepted and extended by scores of historical writers on this
side of the Atlantic as well as the other until it has become
a commonplace in literature. Firm as has been its hold and
important as has been its work, it is almost universally
conceded that further modification or entire rejection must be
the next step to be taken in the presence of the more thorough
and scholarly research which is becoming prominent, and before
all questions can be answered which this study brings to
light. A change has taken place in the thought upon this
subject; a reaction against the idealism of the political
thinkers of half a century ago. The history of the hypothesis
forms an interesting chapter in the relation between modern
thought and the interpretation of past history, and shows that
in the formation of an opinion both writer and reader are
unconsciously dependent upon the spirit of the age in which
they live. The free village community, as it is commonly
understood, standing at the dawn of English and German history
is discoverable in no historical documents, and for that
reason it has been accepted by prudent scholars with caution.
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But the causes which have made it a widely acceptable
hypothesis and have served to entrench it firmly in the mind
of scholar and reader alike, have easily supplied what was
wanting in the way of exact material, and have led to
conclusions which are now recognized as often too hazy,
historically inaccurate, though agreeable to the thought
tendencies of the age. … The Mark as defined by Kemble, who
felt in this interpretation the influence of the German
writers, … was a district large or small with a well-defined
boundary, containing certain proportions of heath, forest, fen
and pasture. Upon this tract of land were communities of
families or households, originally bound by kindred or tribal
ties, but who had early lost this blood relationship and were
composed of freemen, voluntarily associated for mutual support
and tillage of the soil, with commonable rights in the land
within the Mark. The Marks were entirely independent, having
nothing to do with each other, self-supporting and isolated,
until by continual expansion they either federated or
coalesced into larger communities. Such communities varying in
size covered England, internally differing only in minor
details, in all other respects similar. This view of the Mark
had been taken already more or less independently by v. Maurer
in Germany, and five years after the appearance of Kemble's
work, there was published the first of the series of volumes
which have rendered Maurer's name famous as the establisher of
the theory. As his method was more exact, his results were
built upon a more stable foundation than were those of Kemble,
but in general the two writers did not greatly differ."
_C. McL. Andrews,
The Old English Manor,
pages 1-6._
ALSO IN:
_J. M. Kemble,
The Saxons in England,
book 1, chapter 2._
_E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest,
chapter 3, section 2._
_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 3, section 24 (volume 1)._
See, also, MANOR.