THE DEGRADING OF THE PEOPLE 25 



tion to the claims of the socmen. It is, indeed, 

 definitely known that they were degraded, since the 

 Domesday record tells that, twenty years later, the 

 Meldreth estate consisted of the home farm of the lord 

 and outlying peasants' land, and the population 

 comprised one slave and eighteen cotters, labourers, 

 apparently, with small holdings, the descendants of 

 the old freemen of the village. This story well illus- 

 trates what went on throughout England. The new 

 lords took a firmer grip on the land and people, 

 determined that both should be organized, not in the 

 easygoing Anglo-Saxon way, but on the business basis 

 of the manor. The people were to work harder for 

 their new masters. 



During the first century of the Norman rule, arduous 

 feudal conditions were being introduced by the kings in 

 their relation to their immediate feudal tenants. The 

 marriages of children were controlled, and fines or 

 payments exacted. Then a right of wardship was 

 enforced, giving the king an opportunity of taking over 

 and managing, largely for his own profit, the estates of 

 minors. Corresponding exactions were in turn intro- 

 duced by the king's tenants into the arrangements with 

 their own sub-tenants, and so on from class to class 

 of feudal holders, until finally heavier burdens came on 

 to the shoulders of the peasants themselves. During 

 the same century there was introduced the custom 

 called 'astriction,' by virtue of which such of the 

 peasantry as were not of the class of freemen were 

 bound to remain in their homes. As a result of these 

 further changes, the position of the peasants became 

 definitely worse, whilst such genuine grievances as they 

 had were rarely remedied in the national courts, 

 since these courts made it clear that they would only 



