The tendency of the German tribal system unlike the Welsh towards the manor.
These are important points to have gained, but the most important one is that, notwithstanding the strong resemblances between the Welsh and German tribal arrangements, there was this distinct difference between them. The two tribal systems were not working themselves out, so to speak, on the same lines. The Welsh system, in its economic development, was not directly approaching the manorial arrangement except perhaps on the mensal land of the chiefs. The Welsh tribesmen had as a rule no servile tenants under them. The taeogs were mostly the taeogs of the chiefs, not of the tribesmen. Thus, as we have seen, when the conquest of Wales was completed, the tribesmen of the till then unconquered districts became freeholders under the Prince of Wales, and with no mesne lord over them. The taeogs [p346] became taeogs of the Prince of Wales and not of local landowners. So that the manor did not arise. But even in the time of Tacitus the German tribesmen seem to have already become practically manorial lords over their own servi, who were already so nearly in the position of serfs on their estates that Tacitus described them as 'like coloni.'
The German and Roman elements easily combined to make the manor.
The manor—in embryo—was, in fact, already in course of development. The German economic system was, to say the very least, working itself out on lines so nearly parallel to those of the Roman manorial system that we cannot wonder at the silent ease with which before and after the conquest of Roman provinces, German chieftains became lords of villas and manors. The two systems, Roman and German, may well have easily combined in producing the later manorial system which grew up in the Roman provinces of Gaul and the two Germanies.
II. THE TRIBAL HOUSEHOLDS OF GERMAN SETTLERS.
Now, if we were to rely upon this evidence of Tacitus alone, the conclusion would be inevitable that the German and Roman land-systems were so nearly alike in their tendencies that they naturally and simply joined in producing the manorial system of later times. And there can be little doubt that, speaking broadly, this would be a substantially correct statement of the case.
Were there other kinds of settlements not so manorial?
But before we can fairly and finally accept it as such, it is necessary to consider another branch of evidence which has sometimes been understood to point to a kind of settlement not manorial. [p347]
The patronymic suffix ing or ingas to local names.
The evidence alluded to is that of local names ending in the remarkable suffix ing or ingas. It is needful to examine this evidence, notwithstanding its difficult and doubtful nature. It raises a question upon which the last word has by no means yet been spoken, and out of which interesting and important results may eventually spring. The impossibility of arriving, in the present state of the evidence, at a positive conclusion, is no reason why its apparent bearing should not be stated, provided that suggestion and hypothesis be not confounded with verified fact. At all events, the inquiry pursued in this essay would be open to the charge of being one-sided if it were not alluded to.