136 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



deavor to show: first, that the ceorls of the early Anglo-Saxon period were 

 freemen; secondly, that the villani of the later period were not always serfs, 

 there being found some survivals of their original free condition. 



The first thing to be noted is that, as has been already liointed out, there 

 was, in the early Anglo-Saxon period, a class known by the name of laet, 

 who were undoubtedly serfs, the lidi of the continent. They had below 

 them the slaves, esne and theoiv, and above them the ceorls. Now as the 

 ceorls certainly ranked above this servile class, it may be assumed that they 

 were themselves probably free. This probabihty is made stronger by the 

 consideration that the Saxons of the continent had a class of common free- 

 men intermediate between the lidi or serfs and the edelingi or nobles, a 

 class which has no representatives among the Anglo-Saxons unless in the 

 ceorls, the class under consideration. This class upon the continent was 

 called frilingi, and in Anglo-Saxon also we meet the friman (freeman)' al- 

 though this terin is for the most part superseded in the early Jutish laws by 

 the Scandinavian w^ord ceorls. 



The probability is therefore that the ceorls were a free class. We will 

 proceed, however, to examine the actual uses of the word, in order to deter- 

 mine whether this probability is sustained by facts. First we wiU take up the 

 poems of Beowolf , a work which, whatever its date and place of composi- 

 tion, unquestionably j^resents the most ancient picture in existence of the 

 institutions, condition and manners and customs of the Anglo-Saxons. In 

 this poem I find the word ceorl six times. In none of these is it applied 

 to a servile class, or even used in a disparaging sense. Twice (vv. 416 and 

 2,973) it is used of princes; in three cases (vv. 203, 908, 1,591) of the people 

 in general, and in the sixth case (v. 3,444) of a man of the people. If it 

 has one meaning that could apply to all these cases, it is perhaps man.^ . 



"We pass next to the Anglo-Saxon codes of law. In the earliest of these 

 laws, those of Ethelbert of Kent (about 600) ceorl is several times used as 

 equivalent to man or even husband. It is also used to designate a legal 

 class below the King and eorl (ofiicer). The King's mundhyrd is placed at 

 50 shillings, the eorl's at twelve, the ceorl's at six. The ceorl was therefore 

 a man of standing. He even had other men under his protection. Section 

 16 speaks of his cup-bearer, hirele, section 35 of his hlaf-aeta " loaf -eater " 

 or dependent — the correlative of hlaford (lord) or " loaf -giver. " The 

 ceorl could therefore be the lord of another man. Section 17, following 

 directly upon the mention of the ceorls' mundhyrd and hirele, speaks of a 

 man" stun or estate, as it has before spoken of the King's and the eorl's tun; 



1 Leg. Aeth. 24, 27, 29, 31. 



a It should be noticed that in the Bigs-mal, the ahegorical poem which treats of the ori- 

 gin of the Scandinavian classes, Karl (_CeorV) is the common freeman, "the red-haired and 

 ruddy cheeked lad with piercing eyes," whose sons were " Freeman and Braveman, Hold, 

 Thane and Smith, Broadshoulders and Bonde [Peasant] " etc. The corresponding German 

 word Kerl has a somewhat disparaging signification, while the EngUsh word chiwl is sig- 

 nificant of the degradation which the class sustained in England. 



