Village Community and Serfdom in England. 137 



evidently the man here is the ceorl; the ceorl could therefore have an es- 

 tate of land. 



The later laws of Kent contain nothing that adds to the evidence here 

 given. The next stage in the inquiry is tlie laws of Ine of Wessex, about 

 700, that is, about 100 years after those of Ethelbert, and 200 years after the 

 first settlement of Wessex. In these laws we find clear recognition of the 

 ceorls as a free class, inferior to the noble class of sitliciindmen. The 

 ceorl's fine for neglecting mihtary duty is 30 shillings, that of the sitlicund- 

 man being 60 or 120, according as he had land or not (§ 51). Now by Ger- 

 manic law none but freemen could render military service. Therefore the 

 ceorl was a freeman. Again, in accusations of homicide, he is placed in re- 

 gard to compurgation on precisely the same footing with the sithcundman 

 (§ 54). On the other hand a certain degradation is clearly visible, in the 

 penalty of amputation of hand or foot, inflicted for certain offences 

 (§§ 18, 37). It would appear also that the ceorl was already required, or at 

 least expected, as he certainly was afterwards required, to have a lord; 

 sections 37, 38 and 40 treat of the ceorl, and between them comes § 39, re- 

 ferring to " any one " running away from his lord — which would certainly 

 seem to mean " any ceorl." 



There is another passage of the laws of Ine (§ 67), brought up by Mr. See- 

 bohm, as a proof of the existence of serfdom at this period, but which rather 

 shows that it was in the process of introduction, than that it was already 

 existent. I give his translation. " If a man agrees for a yai-d-land or 

 more at a fixed gafol (rent) and plough it, if the lord desire to raise the 

 land to him to ivoi'Jc and to gafol he need not take it upon him if the lord 

 do not give him a dwelling." This statute testifies to the practice of ex- 

 action and encroachment by which tenants were converted into serfs, a 

 process well attested at this very period in the Frank monarchy. It is 

 clear that the peasants (assuming them to have been originally free), had 

 already in large part been reduced from proprietors to tenants, the lands 

 were raiiidly being absorbed into large manorial estates, and by the same 

 process their proprietors were becoming tenants; the next step was to con- 

 vert them from free tenants into serfs. 



At about this ijeriod — the close of the seventh century — belong the 

 earliest (except three or four) of the charters and land grants, which exist in 

 great abundance, and afford the most valuable material for the study of 

 early English social and economical relations. In them we find that the 

 grants consist regularly of estates with their tenants;' and the size of the 



1 The charters in question bef?in in the reign of Ethelbert of Kent, the first Christian king, 

 in the year 605. In all his charters the grants are merely otland — aliquantulum telluris 

 n^el■ (a little bit of my land) Thorpe's Codec Diplomaticus, No. 1; aliquam iiartem terrae 

 juris mei Ca certain part of the land under my jurisdiction), No. 2; villam nomine Sturigao 

 (an estate named Sturigaw.), No. 4. A charter of his son Eadbald (No. 5) says guojitfani 

 partem ten-(ie regni met, xxx uratrorum. (a certain part of the land of my kingdom, 

 30 plough-lands). It is not imtil the close of the century, that the land is defined as of so 

 many occupants; the first is (670) No. 7, unum cassatum (one cottager). From this time 



