That 'geset land' was a general and rather loose term meaning the same thing as 'geneat land' is clear from a charter of A.D. 950, which will be referred to hereafter, wherein a manor is described as containing xxx. hides, ix. of inland and xxi. of 'gesettes land,' and the latter is said to contain so many yard-lands ('gyrda gafol-landes'). This instance also helps us to understand how gafol land, and gesettes land, and geneat land were all interchangeable terms—all, in fact, meaning 'land in villenage,' to the tenants on which we must now turn our attention.
IV. THE GENEATS AND THEIR SERVICES.
Geneat land was land in villenage.
It has been shown that the Saxon thane's estate or manor was divided into thane's inland or demesne land, and geneat land or gesettes land, answering to the land in villenage of the Domesday Survey. Let us now examine into the nature of the villenage on the geneat land under Saxon rule.
'Gesettes land' etymologically seems to mean simply land set or let out to tenants. In the parable of the vineyard, the Saxon translation makes the 'wíngeardes hlaford[164] gesette' it out to husbandmen (gesette þone myd eorð-tylion) before he takes his journey into a far country, and the husbandmen are to pay him as tribute a portion of the annual fruits. [p138]
Need of husbandmen.
In early times, when population was scanty, there was a lack of husbandmen.
King Alfred, in his Saxon translation of Boethius, into which he often puts observations of his own, expresses in one of the most often quoted of these interpolations what doubtless his own experience had shown him, viz., that 'a king must have his tools to reign with—his realm must be well peopled—full manned.' Unless there are priests, soldiers, and workmen—'gebedmen, fyrdmen, and weorcmen'—no king, he says, can show his craft.[165]
We are to take it, then, that population was still scanty, that a thane's manor was not always as well stocked with husbandmen as the necessities of agriculture required. The nation must be fed as well as defended, and both these economic needs were imperative. How, then, was a thane to plant new settlers on his 'gesettes-land'?
Settene stuht, or outfit of geburs.