 The local offered him a pile of dirt in exchange for the ornaments, which the Saxon eagerly accepted.The Thuringians thought they had made a good deal until the Saxons claimed the entire country on the basis that the dirt had been a livery of seisin, and made their legal claim good by force of arms.The turf and twig ceremony dates from the feudal era but was used regularly in early colonial America allowing the English and Scottish (after 1707 termed the British) by virtue of their monarch's claims to take sovereign possession over unclaimed lands.