The word læt is of doubtful meaning in this passage. It might have reference to the Roman læti, or people of conquered tribes deported into Roman provinces at the end of a war; or it might refer to the liti or lidi—the servile tenants mentioned in so many of the early Continental codes. We are not yet in a position to decide. But in any case these læts of King Ethelbert's laws were clearly of a semi-servile class here in Kent, as were the lidi in Frankish Gaul,[201] for their 'wergild' was distinctly less than that of the Kentish freemen.[202] Whether they were a [p175] different class from the geburs or villani, or identical with them, it is not easy to decide.
XI. RESULT OF THE SAXON EVIDENCE.
The evidence of the earliest Saxon or Jutish laws thus leaves us with a strong presumption, if not actual certainty, that the Saxon ham or tun was the estate of a lord, and not of a free village community, and that it was so when the laws of the Kentish men were first codified a few years after the mission of St. Augustine.
The manorial system not of ecclesiastical origin.
It becomes, therefore, all but impossible that the manorial character of English hams and tuns can have had an ecclesiastical origin. The codification of the laws was possibly indeed the direct result of ecclesiastical influence no less than in the case of the Alamannic, and Bavarian, and Visigothic, and Burgundian, and Lombardic codes. In all these cases the codification partook, to some extent, of the character of a compact between the king and the Church. Room had to be made, so to speak, for the new ecclesiastical authority. A recognised status and protection had to be given to the Church for the first time, and this introduction of a new element into national arrangements was perhaps in some cases the occasion of the codification. This may be so; but at the same time it is impossible that a new system of land tenure can have been suddenly introduced with the new [p176] religion. The property granted to the Church from the first was already manorial. A ham or a tun could not be granted to the Church by the king, or an earl, unless it already existed as a manorial estate. The monasteries became, by the grants which now were showered down upon them, lords of manors which were already existing estates, or they could not have been transferred.
The holdings in yard-lands implied serfdom,
Further, looking within the manor, whether on the royal demesne or in private hands, it seems to be clear that as far back as the evidence extends, i.e. the time of King Ine, the holdings—the yard-lands—were held in villenage, and were bundles of a recognised number of acre or half-acre strips in the open field, handed down from one generation to another in single succession without alteration.
because inconsistent with the equal division of allodial property among heirs.
Now let it be fully understood what is involved in this indivisible character of the holding, in its devolution from one holder to another without division among heirs. We have seen that the theory was that as the land and homestead, and also the setene, or outfit, were provided by the lord, they returned to the lord on the death of the holder. The lord granted the holding afresh, most often, no doubt, to the eldest son or nearest relation of the landholder on his payment of an ox or other relief in recognition of the servile nature of the tenure, and thus a custom of primogeniture, no doubt, grew up, which, in the course of generations—how early we do not know—being sanctioned by custom, could not be departed from by the lord. The very possibility of this permanent succession, generation after generation, of a single holder to the indivisible bundle of strips [p177] called a yard-land or virgate, thus seems to have implied the servile nature of the holding. The lord put in his servant as tenant of the yard-land, and put in a successor when the previous one died. This seems to be the theory of it. It was probably precisely the same course of things which ultimately produced primogeniture in the holding of whole manors. The king put in a thane or servant of his (sometimes called the 'king's geneat'), or a monastery put in a steward or villicus to manage a manor. When he died his son may have naturally succeeded to the office or service, until by long custom the office became hereditary, and a succession or inheritance by primogeniture under feudal law was the result. The benefice, or læn, or office was probably not at first generally hereditary; though of course there were many cases of the creation of estates of inheritance, or boc-land, by direct grant of the king. As we have seen from the passage quoted from Bede, the læn of an estate for life was the recognised way in which the king's thanes were rewarded for their services.
Thus it seems that in the very nature of things the permanent equality of the holdings in yard-lands (or double, or half yard-lands), on a manor, was a proof that the tenure was servile, and that the community was not a free village community. For imagine a free village community taking equal lots, and holding these lots, as land of inheritance, by allodial tenure, and with (what seems to have been the universal custom of Teutonic nations as regards land of inheritance) equal division among heirs, how could the equality be possibly maintained? One holder of a yard-land would have seven sons, and another two, and another [p178] one. How could equality be maintained generation after generation? What could prevent the multiplication of intricate subdivisions among heirs, breaking up the yard-lands into smaller bundles of all imaginable sizes? Even if a certain equality could be restored, which is very unlikely, at intervals, by a re-division, which should reverse the inequality produced by the rule of inheritance, what would become of the yard-lands? How could the contents of the yard-land remain the same on the same estate for hundreds of years, notwithstanding the increase in the number of sharers in the land of the free village community?