VI. THE GESITHCUND AND CEORLISC CLASSES IN THEIR CONNECTION WITH LAND.
Pursuing the question of division of classes mentioned in the Dooms of Ine we turn now to the consideration of the most prominent distinction which runs through the clauses of the Dooms, viz. that of gesithcund and ceorlisc.
Roughly speaking, the two distinctions may have been gradually coming more and more to mean much the same thing. As a rule no doubt in King Ine’s time ceorlisc men were twy-hynde and gesithcund men twelve-hynde.
The unit of 10 hides of land.
The same class which, regarded from the point of view of the wergeld, possessed completeness of kindred and the twelve-hynde oath, when looked at from another point of view was gesithcund, i.e. more or less directly in the service of the King and belonging to the official and landed class. So that the value of the oath of both twelve-hynde and gesithcund men may have become easily associated with a territorial unit of ten hides of land.
Now, the fact of the connection of the value of the oath with ten hides of land is pretty good proof that for practical purposes and in common usage the holding of ten hides was looked upon as in some way or other a typical unit of holding of the gesithcund or landed class. There is nothing new in this suggestion, but its lack of novelty does not detract from its value. And an examination from a tribal point of view of the isolated passages in the Dooms of Ine relating to this typical holding of ten hides may possibly throw further and useful light upon the position of the gesithcund class.
While we speak of the gesithcund class as almost equivalent to the landed class it is obvious that it would be wrong to consider every gesithcundman as a landowner. Attention has already been called to the following clause:
(51) If a gesithcundman owning land neglect the fyrd, let him pay 120s. and forfeit his land. One not owning land 60s., a ceorlisc man 30s. as fyrd-wite.
The gesithcundman not possessing land may either be one who has forfeited his land or a cadet of the class not having yet attained to the position of landholding and yet being gesithcund by birth.
Nor would it do to let modern notions of landownership intrude themselves so far into the question as to make us regard the gesithcund and landed class as a class of land-owners in the modern sense. If the typical holding of ten hides be that of the gesithcundman, we may have to regard him rather as a gesith of the King put into possession of the ten hides by way of stewardship than as anything like the absolute owner of them.
Ten hides the unit for food rents to the chieftain or King.
The typical holding of ten hides may perhaps be usefully regarded, from a fiscal point of view, as a unit for purposes of revenue, at a time when that revenue under tribal custom consisted chiefly of food rents paid in kind for the King’s or the chieftain’s use.
Clause 70 of the Dooms of Ine fixes in detail the food rent of ‘ten hides’ ‘to fostre’ or ‘on feorm.’
If the unit of ten hides were not the customary unit for these food rents on the Royal domains why should the details of the food rent of ten hides have been made the subject of an isolated clause like this?
Land grants of 10 hides.
Again, if we turn to the grants made by King Ine to the monasteries, they become intelligible if the system of management of the Royal domains in units and multiples of ten hides may be understood to underlie them. When Ine grants to Aldhelm, then Abbot of Malmesbury, ‘45 cassati’ in the county of Wilts, the grant is found to consist of groups of ‘manentes’ in four different places. And the groups consist of 5, 20, 10, and 10.[262] When Ine makes a grant to Abbot Bernald of land in Somersetshire it consists of three groups of 20, 20, and 20 cassati or manentes from three different estates.[263] And when he makes a similar grant to Glastonbury it consists of 10, 10, 20, 20 hides and one hide in five different places in Somersetshire.[264]
So also when Bede mentions the donations by King Oswy to the Abbess Hilda of 12 possessiuncula terrarum he adds that six were in the province of Deira and six in Bernicia and that each of them consisted of 10 familiæ, so that in all there were 120.[265]
Now it would seem that as ealdormen were set over shires so gesithcund men may have been set over smaller units of 10 hides or multiples of 10 hides, holding them as lænland, not only for services rendered, but also with some kind of subordinate official or even judicial functions.
Official position of the gesithcundman.
Schmid long ago pointed out that the translator of Bede in six passages translated the Latin comes by ‘gesith’ or ‘gesithcundman.’[266] This seems to imply that his position was in some sense an official one, subordinate indeed to the ealdorman’s, as we may also learn from the translator of Bede. For while he translates the ‘villa comitis’ of Bede as the ‘gesith’s hus’ he translates the ‘villa regis’ as the residence of the king’s ealdor (‘botl cyninges ealdor’).[267]
We found in s. 45 of King Ine’s Laws above quoted that the gesithcundman’s burg-bryce was thirty-five scillings while the ealdorman’s was eighty scillings. Still, though the lowest official in the scale, it was something that he should be named with the King, the ealdorman, and the King’s thane as having a burg-bryce according to which he was to make legal denial (ansacan).
The omission from this clause as to burg-bryce of classes below him seems to mark that while even the ceorlisc man—i.e. even the gafol-gelda or gebur—was responsible for the peace within his ‘flet’ and received a fight-wite when it was broken by fighting in it, the gesithcundman belonged to the class with some sort of extra jurisdiction beyond that which attached to every man whose homestead was by long tribal custom a sacred precinct.
His judicial and magisterial duties.
And there is a clause in the Laws of Ine which seems to refer to the something like judicial duties of the gesithcundman, for it shows that neglect of them causing a suit which he ought to have settled to be carried to a higher court—before the ealdorman or the King—deprived him of his right to share in the ‘wite-ræden,’ whatever they were, appertaining to the suit.
Gif gesiðcund mon þingað wið cyning oþþe wið kyninges ealdormannan for his inhiwan oþþe wið his hlaford for þeowe oþþe for frige nah he þær nane witerædenne se gesið forþon he him nolde ær yfles gestieran æt ham.
(50) If a gesithcundman has a suit with the King or with the King’s ealdorman for his household or with his lord for bond or for free; he (the gesith) shall not there have any ‘witeræden’ because he would not correct him before of his evil deeds at home.
That he had special duties to discharge in connection with the ‘fyrd’ was shown not only by one of the qualifications of the gesithcund status being the possession of a coat of mail, helmet, and over-gilded sword, but also by the fyrd-wite of 120 scillings and the loss of his land, if he neglected the fyrd.
His duty to secure the King’s gafol from his land.
That he was put into his landed position under conditions to secure the management of the land for the provision of the King’s gafol is shown by the following clauses, which in regard to one important particular at least point out what was expected of him and further suggest that there was reason to fear that sometimes he might be inclined to desert his post without having performed the conditions upon which his land was held.
Be gesiðcundes monnes fære.
If a gesithcund leaves [the land].
Gif gesiðcund man fare þonne mot he habban his gerefan mid him ⁊ his smið ⁊ his cild-festran.
(63) If a gesithcundman leaves, then may he have with him his reeve [?] and smith and his foster-nurse.
Seþe hæfð xx hida se sceal tæcnan xii hida gesettes landes þonne he faran wille.
(64) He who has 20 hides, he shall show 12 hides of geset land if he want to leave.
Seþe hæfð x hida se sceal tæcnan vi hida gesettes landes.
(65) He who has 10 hides shall show 6 hides of geset land.
Seþe hæbbe þreo hida tæcne oðres healfes.
(66) If he have three hides let him show one and a half.
He must settle tenants on the land.
These clauses suggest very clearly that the gesithcundman had been entrusted with the ten hides or twenty hides, or sometimes a smaller number, under the special obligation to provide the food rent by settling tenants upon the land.
Method of settling gafol-geldas and geburs on yardlands.
Let us pass, then, to what evidence the Dooms of Ine afford as to the customary method of settling tenants on the land.
The very next sections to those just quoted are as follows:—
Be gyrde londes.
Of a yardland.
Gif mon geþingað gyrde landes oþþe mære to ræde-gafole ⁊ geereð, gif se hlaford him wile þ land aræran to weorce ⁊ to gafole, ne þearf he him onfon gif he him nan botl ne selð. ⁊ þolie þara æcra.
(67) If a man agrees for a yardland or more to gafol and ploughs it, if the lord wants to raise the land to work and to gafol, he need not take it upon him if he [the lord] does not give him a botl, and let him give up (?) the acres.
Gif mon gesiðcundne monnan adrife, fordrife þy botle, næs þære setene.
(68) If a man drive off a gesithcundman, let him be driven from the botl, not the setene.
The yardland was the usual holding of the gebur, with a pair of oxen.
Working from the known to the unknown, in a former volume we found that under the open-field system of husbandry the hide at the time of the Domesday survey and earlier was generally held to contain four virgates or yardlands, and that so far as arable land was concerned each yardland was a bundle, so to speak, of about thirty scattered strips or acres. Tracing the yardland further back, the interesting point was gained from the tenth-century document known as the ‘Rectitudines &c.,’ that ‘in some regions’ the custom in allotting a yardland to a tenant called a ‘gebur’ was to give him with his yardland to land-setene seven acres already sown and a pair of oxen, and certain other things theoretically by way of loan, so that on the gebur’s death everything returned to the lord, though in practice the holding and land-setene were no doubt continued to his successor on payment of a ‘relief.’ And this system of settling gafol-geldas and geburs, or whatever such tenants might be locally called, on yardlands seems to be that alluded to in the Dooms of Ine. The clauses incidentally referring to gafol-geldas, geburs, and yardlands thus become intelligible and important in the light of the later evidence. This I endeavoured to show in a former volume.[268]
The hide of four yardlands agricultural.
Now, this system of settling tenants on yardlands by allotting to each a pair of oxen, so that four of them should be able to combine in forming the common plough-team of the hide, obviously belongs to a time when agriculture had become sufficiently important for the unit of occupation and so of gafol-paying and services to be generally agricultural rather than pastoral. But while the hide thus seems to have been connected in the Dooms of Ine mainly with arable farming, it does not follow that it always had been so everywhere. The word ‘hide’ may have originally been applied to a holding devoted more to the grazing of cattle than the growing of corn.
The remarkable document which has been called ‘The Tribal Hidage,’ to the meaning and date of which Mr. W. J. Corbett[269] has opened our eyes, shows that forty or fifty years before the date of the Dooms of Ine the whole of England then subject to the Anglo-Saxons was, as we should say, rated in hides according to its tribes or mægthes, possibly for the fiscal purposes of the Bretwaldaship. And it would seem likely that under the common designation of hides pastoral as well as agricultural units for food rents must have been included. This seems to be indicated by the fact that the hides and virgates of the pastoral districts of West Wales in the Exon Domesday book are many times greater than those of other parts of England, and vary very much in area.
In pastoral districts co-aration of the waste.
In the pastoral or grazing districts recently conquered from West Wales early tribal usage would be very likely to survive. And there may well have been some continuity in the methods of tribal agriculture. Judging from what we know from the Cymric Codes, there might not yet be permanent division of the fields into strips and virgates but rather co-aration of such portions of the waste each year as suited the requirements of the tribesmen.
The team of 8 oxen said not to be German.
The open-field system of agriculture was in its main principles and chief methods common to German and Celtic tribes. But we are told that the Germans knew nothing of co-operative ploughing and the team of eight oxen on which the agricultural hidage of England was so clearly based. For the team of eight oxen we must go to the Cymric Codes and the practice in the Isle of Man and Scotland. It was common to these Celtic regions, even to its details—the yoke of four oxen abreast and the driver walking backwards in front of the team.[270] In such a matter as the method of ploughing there may well have been continuity.
We seem to see in the Laws of Ine the process going on of transition from the tribal form of the open-field system—the co-aration of the waste—to the more fixed forms of settled and permanent agriculture.
The allotment of stock and homestead by the lord to the gebur was the basis of the tenancy.
Thus, without pressing analogies too far, there may be a root of tribal custom discernible even in the system of settling geburs on yardlands. Something very much like it was followed on the Continent under Roman usage. But the case of the veteran to whom a pair of oxen with seed of two kinds was given as his outfit only partly resembled the case of the gebur. In the case of the gebur the outfit of oxen remained in theory the property of the lord, and returned to him on the death of the tenant. This was the essential point which created the semi-servile tenancy. With the homestead went the ‘setene’ or outfit and the corresponding obligation not only of gafol but also of week-work, and out of the peculiar relation so established may have grown up in West Wales, as in Wales itself and Ireland, very easily the doctrine that after its continuance for four generations the tenant became adscriptus glebæ.
The allotment of stock by the Irish chieftain formed, as we have seen, in a cattle-breeding rather than an agricultural community the traditional tie between himself and his tenants, whether tribesmen or strangers. The Cymric chieftain of a kindred followed very nearly the same traditional practice when he gave to the young tribesman on his attaining the age of fourteen his da (or allotment of cattle) for his maintenance, thereby establishing the relation of ‘man and kin’ between him and the chief.
The same tribal principles were, moreover, applied to strangers both in Ireland and Wales. The Irish ‘fuidhir’ thus settled on the chieftain’s land became, as we have seen, after four generations adscriptus glebæ, and so did the Aillt or Alltud settled on the Cymric chieftain’s land. And the same number of generations attached the nativus to the land under early Scotch law.
Now, if under tribal usage this was so, it need not be surprising that in the newly conquered districts of West Wales or more generally in Wessex at the time of King Ine, when the extension of agriculture was an immediate necessity, something like the same traditional system should continue or come again naturally into use, producing something like the same kind of dependence of one class upon the other.
This system of settlement very general.
It is necessary to point out that this method of settling tenants on yardlands with an outfit of a pair of oxen &c. was more or less general, because doubts have been recently thrown upon it. Its prevalence as a custom does not rest entirely on the evidence of the ‘Rectitudines’ but on several incidental mentions of it in various and distant quarters.
Kent.
For instance, in the will of a reeve named Abba of Kent (about A.D. 833)[271] is the gift of a ‘half swulung’—i.e. what elsewhere would have been described as a half hide—and with that land were to go four oxen, two cows, and fifty sheep, that is two oxen and one cow and twenty-five sheep to each gioc or yardland.
Glastonbury.
And again, the Inquisition of Glastonbury (A.D. 1189)[272] describes the holder of a yardland almost in the same terms as those used in the ‘Rectitudines’ in the description of the gebur. He is said to hold a yardland for 32d. (probably 1d. per acre), and every Monday he must plough a half-acre and harrow it, and he works every day in the week but on Sunday. He has from his lord one heifer (averum) and two oxen and one cow and seven acres of corn sown and three acres of oats (to start with)—ten acres in all sown—and six sheep and one ram. King Ine made grants of land, as we have seen, to Glastonbury, and it is interesting to find the custom of allowing two oxen, one cow, and six sheep to the yardland as described in the ‘Rectitudines’ still going on in West Wales five hundred years after Ine’s time on the estates of the Abbey.
Winchester.
Take again the charter MLXXIX. mentioned by Kemble (i. p. 216). This charter shows that the Bishop of Winchester (A.D. 902) had leased fifteen hides of land to a relative of the Bishop, requiring that he must settle there (inberthan)[273] men who would be fixed (hamettan) to the place. He himself had ‘hamet’ Lufe and her three bairns, and Luhan and his six bairns, and these must remain on the land whoever might hold it. There were also three witetheows burbærde and three more theowbærde belonging to the Bishop, with their descendants (and hire team). At this date the settling of new tenants (may we not say?) some of them as geburs and some as theows was still going on in Wessex A.D. 902.
It is quite true that the holders of these yardlands are not everywhere always described as geburs. But we are dealing with the thing, not the name. The word gebur, however, was of much wider use than merely in one or two localities.
Tyddenham.
It is not only in the ‘Rectitudines’ that the gebur and his services are mentioned. On the Tyddenham Manor of King Edwy on the ‘geset-land’ there were ‘geburs’ with yardlands (gyrdagafollandes)—as mentioned in the former volume (p. 150). And other examples may be quoted.
Shaftesbury. Hatfield.
In the will of Wynfled[274] there is mention of lands at Shaftesbury and ‘the geburs that on those gafollands sit’ (þara gebura di on þam gafollandes sittað). And as incidental evidence that the geburs became in course of time adscripti glebæ, it is worth while to remember that early in the eleventh century the monks of Ely in connection with their Manor of Hatfield kept record of the children of the geburs on their estate who had married with others of neighbouring manors, so that they might not lose sight of them and their rights over them. And the importance with which their rights were regarded is emphasised by the fact that the record was kept upon the back of an ancient copy of the Gospels belonging presumably to the altar of St. Etheldreda.[275]
Now, if such in part was the relation between the gesithcundman and the tenants of the yardlands of his ‘geset-land’ arising from the allotment or loan of stock, may not something of the same kind lie at the root of the relation between the gesithcundman himself and the King? Lord as he may have been over his ceorlisc gafol-geldas, was not the gesithcundman himself a servant of the King looking after the King’s gafol, a kind of middleman, tied to his post with the ealdorman above him in the hierarchy of Royal service, liable to lose his land if he neglected his duty?
How far the gebur was adscriptus glebæ.
It is an interesting question how far the ceorlisc class were adscripti glebæ under the Laws of Ine, but when we try to find this out we discover that both classes seem to be under some kind of restraint as to ‘going away’ (fære). If a gesithcundman ‘fare’ we have seen under what restrictions it must be. There is another clause which deals with the case of persons who shall ‘fare’ without leave from their lords.
Gif hwa fare unaliefed fram his hlaforde oþþe on oðre scire hine bestele ⁊ hine mon geahsige fare þær he ær wæs ⁊ geselle his hlaforde lx scill.
(s. 39) If any one go from his lord without leave or steal himself away into another shire and he be discovered, let him go where he was before and pay to his lord 60 scillings.
Judged in the light of later laws to the same or nearly similar effect, this clause must probably be regarded rather as early evidence of the relation between lord and man established generally for the maintenance of the public peace, than as bearing directly upon the question of the attachment of the smaller class of tenants to the soil.[276] And yet if the relation of the ordinary freeman to, let us say, the ealdorman of the shire was such that he might not move into another shire without leave, and until it was ascertained whether his action was bona fide, or perhaps with the object to escape from debt or vengeance for a wrong committed, the restriction would be likely to be still stronger when a tenant was under fixed obligations to his lord, or had, by taking a yardland and homestead, settled on his lord’s land and accepted stock under conditions of gafol and week-work regulated by general usage.
The idea of freedom as a kind of masterful independence of the individual was not one inherited from tribal modes of thought, nor likely to be fostered by the circumstances of the times which followed upon the Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain. When this fact is fully recognised, the gulf between the gesithcund and ceorlisc classes does not seem so deep, after all, as it would be if, instead of approaching the question from a tribal point of view, we were looking for allodial landowners on the one hand and expecting the ceorl to be a member of a village community of independent peasant proprietors on the other hand.
The king’s food rents or gafol how paid.
But we are not doing this, and, returning to the gesithcundman, perhaps we have after all taken for granted quite enough that the general environment in Wessex was agricultural rather than pastoral. Even as regards King Ine himself, there may have been a good deal of the tribal chieftain still left in his relations to his gesithcund followers and officials. We have spoken of his tribal food rents; but how did he gather them?
The firma unius noctis.
No doubt the King’s gafol may partly have been paid in money. But so far as it was paid in kind it must have been carried by his tenants to his Winchester palace, or one of his other manors, according to the system prevalent at the time, followed for centuries after in West Wales, viz. the system of the ‘night’s entertainment’ (firma unius noctis)—a system followed by tribal chieftains and their Royal successors in Scandinavia as well as in Britain.
When the Domesday survey was made of what was once West Wales there was found still existing, especially in Dorsetshire, the survival of a very practical arrangement of Royal food rents which may have been in use in King Ine’s time and date back possibly before the West Saxon conquests.
Some portions of the ‘terra Regis’ scattered about the county of Dorset are grouped in the survey so that each group might supply the firma unius noctis, the money equivalent of which is stated to be 104l., i.e. 2l. per night’s entertainment for one night each week in the year. This mode of providing the firma unius noctis is illustrated by the legend which represents King Ine himself and his queen as moving from manor to manor for each night’s entertainment, their moveable palace of poles and curtains being carried before them from place to place upon sumpter mules.
Now, if we might regard the gesithcundman as one of a class to whom ten hides or twenty hides had been allotted by King Ine on a system providing in this practical way inter alia for the night’s entertainments, it would be natural that the food rent of the unit of ten hides should be fixed. And further, it would be natural that if the gesithcundman should wish to throw up his post and desert the land entrusted to his management he should be restricted, as we have seen, by conditions intended to secure that the provision for the King’s entertainment or gafol in lieu of it should not materially suffer.
The gesithcundman sometimes evicted.
We have seen that as the ealdorman was to lose his ‘shire’ if he let go a thief, so the gesithcundman was to pay a fyrdwite, and to lose his land if he neglected the fyrd. It was possible, then, that he might have to be evicted. And a clause in the Dooms of Ine has already been quoted which seems to refer to the eviction of a gesithcundman.
Be gesiðcundes monnes dræfe of londe.
(68) If a gesithcundman be driven off land.
Gif mon gesiðcundne monnan adrife, fordrife þy botle næs þære setene.
If one drive off a gesithcundman, let him be driven forth from the homestead (botl), not the setene.
If he was evicted he was to be driven from the botl or homestead, not the setene. What can the setene have been?
Were the stock and crops always his own?
The land granted or intrusted to the gesithcundman for the performance of corresponding duties is not likely to have been mere waste. Part of it might surely already be ‘geset land,’ let to tenants of yardlands. On the rest of it still held in demesne there would probably be some herds of cattle. In these early days the cattle and corn on the land were far more valuable than the mere land itself. If, therefore, a fixed food rent was payable to the King, may it not be inferred that sometimes the typical holding of ten hides included the stock let with it, just as, according to the ‘Rectitudines,’ the yardland did? Following strictly the analogy, the original stock on the land and in the hands of the tenants would be the ‘setene’ of the gesithcundman, theoretically, like the land itself, belonging, not to him, but to his lord? It might have been sometimes so. But at the same time there might be other cases in which the possession of cattle may have led to the tenure. The ceorl or the wealh who had risen to having five hides may have brought the cattle or setene with him. And to evict him from his own cattle and crops as well as from the botl might be unjust.
The text as it stands seems to mean that the gesithcundman is not to be evicted from the setene, and the clause seems to be intended to protect his rights and to prevent his being evicted from his own stock and crops on the land. The clause is not clear, but it adds to the sense that in the case of the gesithcundman we are not dealing with a landowner who can do what he likes with his own, any more than in the case of the ceorlisc gafol-geldas we are dealing with a class of peasant proprietors.
Position of the two classes in Ine’s time.
Difficult as it may be to come to a clear understanding of some of these isolated passages in the Dooms of Ine, they may at least have saved us from the pitfall of a fatal anachronism. Their difficulties, forcing us to think, may in some degree have helped us to realise the point of view from which the two classes—gesithcund and ceorlisc—were regarded in early Wessex legislation.
The gesithcund class the landed class. The ceorlisc class the tenant class paying gafol to the landed class.
Throughout Wessex, speaking generally, they seem to have been regarded as the two prominent classes in practical agricultural life. The general facts of everyday observation marked off the gesithcundman as belonging to the ruling class, holding land direct from the King as the King’s gesith, while the ceorlisc man, speaking generally, in his relation to land was the gafol-gelda or gebur sometimes probably holding his yardland on the King’s demesne, but mostly perhaps and more and more often as the tenant of the gesithcundman. This, it would seem, had become so general that in King Alfred’s day and perhaps even in King Ine’s, ignoring the exceptional classes between the gesithcund and the other class, there was no absurdity in King Alfred’s claiming that equally dear with the Danish lysing the ‘ceorl who sits on gafol land’ should have a twy-hynde wergeld.
The division into gesithcund and ceorlisc classes was doubtless a somewhat rough and wide generalisation. There were, we know, men without land who belonged to the gesithcund class, and ceorls who were not tenants of yardlands. And even among the tenants of yardlands some paid gafol only and others both gafol and week-work. But for our purpose the fact to be noted is that the generalisation was sufficiently near the truth for it to be made.
The ceorlisc class would include newly made freedmen.
We must not infer that these two classes included strictly the whole population. Judging from Continental evidence, Wessex must have been very exceptional indeed if there were not everywhere numerous theows or thralls. From this class Anglo-Saxon wills and other documents show that there was a constant stream of freedmen or theows who by emancipation were allowed to creep up into the ceorlisc class, partly as the result of Christian impulse, and partly probably from the lack of tenants to occupy the yardlands left vacant by the desolation caused by constant wars.
Thus while, broadly speaking, the gesithcund and the ceorlisc classes may have corresponded to the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde classes, they were not absolutely identical. The two lines of distinction had not the same origin and did not run absolutely parallel. But they may well have worked in the same direction. The original distinction founded upon the possession or absence of the perfect kindred and ‘hyndens of oath-helpers’ was rooted in tribal instincts and never wholly extinguished throughout Anglo-Saxon history. The gesithcund class, most perfect in their kindred and nearest in their relation to the King, influenced perhaps by traditions of Roman land management, naturally grew up into a twelve-hynde and landed class, while the ceorlisc class, recruited from outside and from below, just as naturally became their tenants.
The gulf between the two classes existed in King Alfred’s time.
Thus in England, as elsewhere, we may easily believe that the gulf between classes resulting from tribal instincts and confirmed by difference in wergelds was hardened and widened by the conditions of landholding in the conquered country, which tended to raise the one class more and more into manorial lords and depress the other into more or less servile tenants. The Compact between Alfred and Guthrum affords the strongest evidence that already in King Alfred’s time the process was far enough advanced for a pretty hard line to be drawn between them.