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.