[1131] He is to ‘work’ for his lord; but then see how Oswald speaks of his knights and radmen: ‘semper illius ... dominatui et voluntati ... cum omni humilitate et subiectione subditi fiant secundum ipsius voluntatem.’ Cf. D. B. i. 172 b: ‘deserviebat sicut episcopus volebat’ ... ‘tenuit ad servitium quod episcopus voluit.’ The translator who turned him into a villanus was capable of turning the king’s geneat of Ine’s law into a colonus, a colonus with a wergild of 1200 shillings! See Schmid, p. 29.
[1133] See e.g. cap. i., where it is pretty clear that he can not translate scorp. So in the Latin version of Edgar II. c. 1 he renders geneatland by terra villanorum. But about such a matter as this the testimony of the Quadripartitus is of no value. See Liebermann, Gerefa, Anglia, ix. 258.
[1134] Mr Seebohm, p. 130, commits what seems to me the mistake of saying that the cottiers and boors are ‘various classes of geneats.’ To my thinking a great contrast is drawn between the geneat and the gebúr both in this document and in the account of Tidenham. So in Edgar II. c. 1 the contrast is between land which the great man has in hand and land which he has let to his ‘fellows,’ his equites and ministri. See Konrad Maurer, K. U. ii. 405–6. Such words as gebúr and burus are obviously very loose words and it is likely that many a man who answered to the description of the gebúr given by the Rectitudines appears in Domesday Book, which in general cares only about fiscal distinctions, as a villanus or bordarius. But we have clear proof that the surveyors saw a class of buri ( = coliberti) who were distinct from the ordinary villani. See above, [p. 36].
[1135] K. 452 (ii. 327). See also Two Chartularies of Bath Abbey (Somerset Record Society), pp. 5, 18, 19.
[1136] K. iii. 449; E. 375: Seebohm, 148. Both documents come from MS. C.C.C. Camb. cxi. The conveyance is on f. 57, the statement of services on f. 73. The statement of services immediately precedes the lease of Tidenham to Stigand, K. 822 (iv. 171). Thus we have really better reason for referring that statement to the very eve of the Norman Conquest than to 956. See also Kemble, Saxons, i. 321, and Maurer, K. U. ii. 406.
[1137] K. 1077 (v. 146; iv. 306); T. 143; Kemble, Saxons, i. 319; Seebohm, 160. But the form of the instrument as given in the Codex Wintoniensis is best seen in B. ii. 240. We have quoted above the estimate of this Codex formed by Mr Haddan and Dr Stubbs (Councils, iii. 638).
[1138] B. ii. 238.
[1139] B. ii. 239.