On the Frankish manors there were two classes of these semi-servile tenants—'mansi ingenuiles,' who were free from the 'week-work;' and 'mansi serviles,' from whom 'week-work' was due. Probably owing to the nature of the Saxon conquest the first of these classes seems to have practically become absorbed in the other. The laws of Ine, indeed, mention the gafol-gelder who, providing his own homestead, did not become liable to 'week-work' like the 'gebur.' But [p408] in the statements of the services on the manors of Hisseburne and Tidenham no such class appears. In the 'Rectitudines' there is no class mentioned between the thane, who is lord of the manor, and the 'geneats'—i.e. the 'gebur' and the 'cotsetl.' In the Domesday Survey there are no tenants above the villani, as a general rule, except in the Danish districts, where the 'Sochmanni' and the 'liberi homines' appear.
Comparing the status of English and German holders of 'yard-lands' and 'huben,' the resemblances are remarkable, and they confirm the suggestion of a common origin. Both are 'adscripti glebæ.' In both cases there is the absence of division among heirs. In both the succession is single, and in theory at the will of the lord. In both there are the gafol and customary services.
In both cases there is the distinction in grade of serfdom between the man who freely becomes the holder of a yard-land or hub by his own surrender, or by voluntary submission to the semi-servile tenure, and the man who is a nativus or born serf.
In both cases there is a regular contribution towards military service or the equipment of a soldier, and apparently no bar in status from actual service, though doubtless in a semi-menial position.
The confusion perhaps partly a survival from Roman provincial conditions.
In all these points we have noticed strong analogies between the semi-free and semi-servile conditions of the various classes of tenants on Roman villas, and on the Roman public lands, which we have spoken of as the great provincial manor of the Roman Empire. And the natural inference seems to be, that even the curious confusion of the free and servile status may [p409] be, in part, a survival of the like confusion in the Roman provinces. It naturally grew up under the semi-military rule of the German provinces, and possibly in Britain also; whilst the Saxon conquest of the latter, no doubt, as we have said, tended to reduce the confusion into something like simplicity by fusing together classes of semi-servile tenants of various historical origins, in the one common class of the later 'geneats' or 'villani,' in whose status the old confusion, however, survived.
XI. RESULT OF THE COMPARISON.
Strong evidence of connexion between Britain and the South German provinces during Roman rule, in the serfdom and in the open-field system which was its shell.
To sum up the result of the comparison made in this chapter between the English and the Continental open-field system and serfdom. The English and South-German systems at the time of the earliest records in the seventh century were to all intents and purposes apparently identical.
The mediæval serf, judging from the evidence of his gafol and services, seems to have been the compound product of survivals from three separate ancient conditions, gradually, during Roman provincial rule and under the influence of barbarian conquest, confused and blended into one, viz. those of the slave on the Roman villa, of the colonus or other semi-servile and mostly barbarian tenants on the Roman villa or public lands, and of the slave of the German tribesman, who to the eyes of Tacitus was so very much like a Roman colonus.