138 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. 



estates is regularly estimated by tenants — cassati, manentes, fributarii, 

 sometimes niansa and Mda, all these terms being used as equivalent.^ This 

 shows that the peasants were at this time largely tenants upon the estates 

 of others; it does not show that they were originally so, or that they were 

 serfs. That they were still personally free, although upon the point of los- 

 ing their freedom, is, I think, proved by the evidence which I have brought 

 up: it is a fair inference, from the analogy of other Germanic nations, that 

 their land was also originally their own, and this seems also to follow from 

 the mention of the " mannes tun" (Aeth., 17), when speaking of the ceorls. 

 After Ine's laws, of about the year 700, there is a gap of nearly two hun- 

 dred years, until the time of Alfred, in which reign the series of statutes 

 begins again, and continues in an unbroken succession until the conquest. 

 The most important change noted in the new series of laws after this inter- 

 val, is the uniformity and reiteration with which it is required that every 

 man miist have a lord, and the rights of the lord are maintained 

 against the caprice of the man, or the rivalry of other lords. Omnis 

 homo hdbeat advocatum suum (every man shall have his surety) Edward, 1.: 

 non recipiat aliquis Jiominem alterius sine licentia illius (No person shall 

 receive the man of another without his permission), id. 7. , are regulations 

 repeated in substance in nearly every body of laws. But notwithstanding 

 the rigid requirement of this submission to a lord, it appears that there still 

 survived a certain freedom of choice in the act: ne dominus libero homini 

 MafordsoJoiam interdicat (let not the lord prohibit the free man to choose a 

 lord). Here the free status of the man is clearly implied; and in the laws of 

 Alfred we have a number of provisions testifying to the lawworthiness and 

 therefore original freedom of the peasants. Si quis in eeorlisces mannes 

 flet gefeohte, i. e., in rusticani hominis domus area pugnet (if any one 

 fights in the court of a ceorl). Section 40. Ceorli eodorbrece, i. e. , rustici 

 sepis fractio (trespasses uj^on the enclosure of a ceorl), where the ceorl is 

 placed on the same footing as the king, the bishop, the alderman, etc. 

 Section 10 places the ceorl on the same legal footing with the twelfhynd 

 and sexhynd men, who were thegns. Section 25 speaks of ceorles mennen= 



this is the universal method ; but there are several expressions whicn show that it is still 

 the land, reckoned in peasants' holdings, rather than the peasants themselves, that is con- 

 veyed by the grant. No. 8, (675) says quandam terrani . ... id est, decern manentes 

 (a certain piece of land . . . that is to say, ten tenants). No. 10, terram . . . xviii 

 manentes continenteni (land containing eighteen tenants.) No. 13, centum manentes qui 

 adjacent civitati (100 tenants adjoining the city). No. 33 (691) terram . . . quaclra- 

 inta quatuor cassatorum capacem (land containing forty-four cottagers). No. 40, quadra- 

 ginta terrae illius manentes (forty tenants of that land) ; and, especially, No. 20, terra 

 super verticem montis. . . est sub estimatione sex manentium (land on top of the mountain 

 reckoned to be of six tenants). In all these cases it is clear that measurements of land are 

 in question, and in the last instance it is apparently unoccupied land, roughly estimated 

 in terms of peasant holdings. 



^ " . . . terram septies quinos tributariorum jugera continenteni. Est autem rus 

 praedictum in quatuor villulis separatum . . . quinque manentium . . . decern, 

 cassatorum . . . decent mansionum . . . decent manentium. Cod. Dipl. cxi. 



