The ceorl was a man with a household and flet and so had a mund-byrd.
So far as the word ceorl had a special sense, it meant the married man,[310] the husband with a homestead and household, like the North-country husbandman with his husbandland. In this special sense every ceorl may have been a freeman, but every freeman may not have been a ceorl. Hence in the clauses as regards mund-byrd the contrast is between the eorl and the ceorl. Both were men with homesteads and households. Unless they had persons under their ‘mund’ they could not have had corresponding mund-byrds. The freeman who did not happen to be a man with a homestead and household could have no mund-byrd, because he had no precinct within which his peace could be broken, and no household under his protection. But he could have a wergeld.
So, again, in the clauses quoted relating to injuries done to servants in the Laws of Ethelbert:—
14. If a man lie with an eorl’s birele, let him make bot with xii scillings.
16. If a man lie with a ceorl’s birele, let him make bot with vi scillings. If with a theow of the second class, l sceatts; if with one of the third class xxx sceatts.
25. If any one slay a ceorl’s hlafæta, let him pay bot with vi scillings.
The ceorl in this contrast is again a husbandman with a homestead and household and with bireles and theows and hlafætas under his roof or in his ‘ham.’ Wherever in the Kentish laws the word ‘ceorl’ is used in any other sense, I think the meaning is confined to that of the married man—the husband, as in the phrase ‘husband and wife.’
So regarded, the division for purposes of mund-byrd into eorlisc and ceorlisc classes was natural, and so also, for purposes of wergeld, was the distinction between eorl and freeman. As regards the wergeld, we may consider the terms ceorl and freeman as practically interchangeable, inasmuch as every ceorl was certainly a freeman, and the unmarried freeman was probably a cadet or member of the household of some eorlisc or ceorlisc man.