Note 310 — Book VIII.

Faldas. Falda is frequently used, as Spelman informs us, pro libertate faldagii—faldagium being a privilege, which Lords anciently, not unfrequently, reserved to themselves, of setting up folds for sheep in any fields within their manors, the better to feed their flocks, and this, not merely with their own but their Tenants’ sheep, although, in the latter case, the privilege was more usually called secta faldæ.

It should rather seem, that the Tenants sometimes enjoyed such a privilege as against their Lords. Falda i.e. homines villæ debent ponere oves suas in faldam Domini, are the words of an ancient MS. relating to the Monastery of St. Edmund. When the term forinsecas is attached to faldas, a difficulty occurs, which perhaps may be got over by recurring to the doctrine of subinfeudation, so common when Glanville wrote. The privilege in question might have been within the boundaries of the ancient or original manor, whilst it might have been external or without the circuit of a less manor, forming merely a part of the original manor and created in a course of posterior subinfeudation.—This is submitted merely as a conjecture.