14. Yet, with all this, the poor ceorls generally had enough for themselves, and some to spare, which they sold at the markets, and thus were able to save a little money.
15. Their cottages were round huts, made of the rough branches of trees, coated with clay, and thatched with straw. They had neither windows nor chimneys; but a hole was made in the roof to let out the smoke from the wood fire, kindled on a hearth in the middle of the room; and they used to bake their barley-cakes, which served them for bread, on these hearths, without any oven.
16. They made a coarse kind of cloth for clothing from the wool of their sheep, a part of which was also given to their lord, and was used to clothe the servants of his household, for the rich people got a finer cloth for themselves, which was brought from other countries.
17. Great men usually wore white cloth tunics that reached to the knee, with broad coloured borders, and belts round the waist. They had short cloaks, linen drawers and black leather shoes, with coloured bands crossed on their legs, instead of stockings. The common people wore tunics of coarse dark cloth, and shoes, but no covering on the legs.
18. But I must tell you something more about these country folks, who, at the time, formed the great mass of the English population. They were, strictly speaking, in bondage, for they could not leave the place where they were born, nor the master they belonged to, unless he gave them their freedom; they were obliged to serve as soldiers in war time, and when the land was transferred to a new lord, the people were transferred with it.
19. All they had might at any time be taken from them, and their sons and daughters could not marry, without consent of their lord.
20. Yet these people considered themselves free, because they could not be sold like the slaves; for I ought to tell you there was a lower class of bondmen, called thralls, and there were regular slave markets where they were bought and sold.
21. A landowner could sell a thrall just as he could sell an ox; but he could not sell a vassal tenant, or, as they were called in the Saxon times, a ceorl, or churl, without the estate to which he belonged. The thralls were employed to do the hardest and meanest work, and had nothing of their own.
22. The houses of the great men were very like large barns, and each house stood on an open space of ground, enclosed by a wall of earth and a ditch, within which there were stacks of corn, sheds for the horses and cattle, and huts for the thralls to sleep in.