history, we meet with charters containing royal grants of land in different parts of Kent, especially in its south-eastern locality, to which was attached "the use of the woods in Andred;" again "the right of pasturage and feeding of a herd of swine in the Andred's Weald;" again "Pasturage for Swine which in our Saxon tongue we call denbera;" and again, "In the woods called Andred 120 waggons of wood to support the fires for preparing Salt."
   The possession to which this right of pannage attached were granted to the heads of the Church and the religious houses, as well as to the military followers of the King, called thanes, from whom it has been conjectured that Tenterden derived its name. There were three kinds of thanes,—(1) Those who served the sovereign as his attendants, and were succeeded by the Norman barons; (2) those who served under dukes, earls, and the dignitaries of the Church, who afterwards became lords of manors, with a limited jurisdiction; and a third class, composed of freeholders of an inferior degree.
   We have no evidence that Andred was originally a

royal forest of chase, but while Kent continued a distinct kingdom its sovereign enjoyed a paramount control over it, including the timber and other royalties.
   In process of time, with an increasing population, a limit was put to the general right of pannage, and we find grants to the freemen of the laths of Limen, Wye, and Burg, now Shipway, Scray, and St. Augustine, sometimes conferred by the sovereign with the consent of "the princes and great men," at other times with the consent of "the Wittan" or councillors of the nation, and these rights at last became limited to certain defined districts called "denes," being the wooded valley of the forest yielding both covert and mast. Names were now given to them; among the earliest we trace Frittenden, Benenden, Biddenden, Surrenden, etc. These denes sometimes also bore the name of the occupier, as our modern farms have subsequently done. While these denes were all situate within the Weald, the possessions which conferred them were scattered over different parts of Kent, especially the eastern portion of it. They were approached