Within the
It was the
He was the

on the free recognition of his fellow villagers.
township every freeman or ceorl was equal.
freeman who was the base of village society.
"free-necked man" whose long hair floated over a neck
which had never bowed to a lord. He was the "weaponed
man" who alone bore spear and sword, and who alone.
preserved that right of self-redress or private war which
in such a state of society formed the main check upon
lawless outrage.

Among the English, as among all the races of mankind, Justice. justice had originally sprung from each man's personal action. There had been a time when every freeman was his own avenger. But even in the earliest forms of English society of which we find traces this right of self-defence was being modified and restricted by a growing sense of public justice. The "blood-wite" or compensation in money for personal wrong was the first effort of the tribe as a whole to regulate private revenge. The freeman's life and the freeman's limb had each on this system its legal price. "Eye for eye," ran the rough code, and "life for life," or for each fair damages. We see a further step towards the modern recognition of a wrong as done not to the individual man but to the people at large in another custom of early date. The price of life or limb was paid, not by the wrong-doer to the man he wronged, but by the family or house of the wrong-doer to the family or house of the wronged. Order and law were thus made to rest in each little group of people upon the blood-bond which knit its families together; every outrage was held to have been done by all who were linked in blood to the doer of it, every crime to have been done against all who were linked in blood to the sufferer from it. From this sense of the value of the family bond as a means of restraining the wrong-doer by forces which the tribe as a whole did not as yet possess sprang the first rude forms of English justice. Each kinsman was his kinsman's keeper, bound to protect him from wrong, to hinder him from wrong-doing, and to

The

English Conquest

CHAP. I. suffer with him and pay for him if wrong were done. So fully was this principle recognized that even if any man was charged before his fellow-tribesmen with crime his kinsfolk still remained in fact his sole judges; for it was by their solemn oath of his innocence or his guilt that he had to stand or fall.

of Britain.

449577.

The Land.

As the blood-bond gave its first form to English justice, so it gave their first forms to English society and English warfare. Kinsmen fought side by side in the hour of battle, and the feelings of honour and discipline which held the host together were drawn from the common duty of every man in each little group of warriors to his house. And as they fought side by side on the field, so they dwelled side by side on the soil. Harling abode by Harling, and Billing by Billing; and each "wick" or "ham" or "stead" or "tun " took its name from the kinsmen who dwelled together in it. In this way the home or "ham" of the Billings was Billingham, and the "tun" or township of the Harlings was Harlington. But in such settlements the tie of blood was widened into the larger tie of land. Land with the German race seems at a very early time to have become everywhere the accompaniment of full freedom. The freeman was strictly the free-holder, and the exercize of his full rights as a free member of the community to which he belonged became inseparable from the possession of his "holding" in it. But property had not as yet reached that stage of absolutely personal possession which the social philosophy of a later time falsely regarded as its earliest state. The woodland and pasture-land of an English village were still undivided, and every free villager had the right of turning into it his cattle or swine. The meadow-land lay in like manner open and undivided from hay-harvest to spring. It was only when grass began to grow afresh that the common meadow was fenced off into grass-fields, one for each household in the village; and when hayharvest was over fence and division were at an end again.

The plough-land alone was permanently allotted in equal CHAP. I. shares both of corn-land and fallow-land to the families of the freemen, though even the plough-land was subject to fresh division as the number of claimants grew greater or less.

It was this sharing in the common land which marked off the freeman or ceorl from the unfree man or læt, the tiller of land which another owned. As the ceorl was the descendant of settlers who whether from their earlier arrival or from kinship with the original settlers of the village had been admitted to a share in its land and its corporate life, so the læt was a descendant of later comers to whom such a share was denied, or in some cases perhaps of earlier dwellers from whom the land had been wrested by force of arms. In the modern sense of freedom the læt was free enough. He had house and home of his own, his life and limb were as secure as the ceorl's-save as against his lord; it is probable from what we see in later laws that as time went on he was recognized among the three tribes as a member of the nation, summoned to the folk-moot, allowed equal right at law, and called like the full free man to the hosting. But he was unfree as regards lord and land. He had neither part nor lot in the common land of the village. The ground which he tilled he held of some free man of the tribe to whom he paid rent in labour or in kind. And this man was his lord. Whatever rights the unfree villager might gain in the general social life of his fellow villagers, he had no rights as against his lord. He could leave neither land nor lord at his will. He was bound to render due service to his lord in tillage or in fight. So long however as these services were done the land was his own. His lord could not take it from him; and he was bound to give him aid and protection in exchange for his services.

Far different from the position of the iæt was that of the slave, though there is no ground for believing that the slave class was other than a small one. It was a class

The English Conquest of Britain.

449-
577.

Lat and
Slave.

men to "

which sprang mainly from debt or crime. Famine drove
bend their heads in the evil days for meat; " the
debtor, unable to discharge his debt, flung on the ground
his freeman's sword and spear, took up the labourer's
mattock, and placed his head as a slave within a master's
hands. The criminal whose kinsfolk would not make up
his fine became a crime-serf of the plaintiff or the king.
Sometimes a father pressed by need sold children and wife
into bondage. In any case the slave became part of the
live stock of his master's estate, to be willed away at death
with horse or ox, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as
his own. His children were bondsmen like himself; even a
freeman's children by a slave mother inherited the mother's
taint. Mine is the calf that is born of my cow," ran an
English proverb. Slave cabins clustered round the home-
stead of every rich landowner; ploughman, shepherd,
goatherd, swineherd, oxherd and cowherd, dairymaid,
barnman, sower, hayward and woodward, were often slaves.
It was not indeed slavery such as we have known in
modern times, for stripes and bonds were rare: if the
slave was slain it was by an angry blow, not by the lash.
But his master could slay him if he would; it was but
a chattel the less. The slave had no place in the justice.
court, no kinsmen to claim vengeance or guilt-fine for
his wrong.
If a stranger slew him his lord claimed the
damages; if guilty of wrong-doing, "his skin paid for
him" under his master's lash. If he fled he might be
chased like a strayed beast, and when caught he might be
flogged to death. If the wrong-doer were a woman-slave
she might be burned.

With the public life of the village however the slave had nothing, the læt in early days little, to do. In its Moot, the common meeting of its villagers for justice and government, a slave had no place or voice, while the let was originally represented by the lord whose land he tiled. The life, the sovereignty of the settlement resided solely in the body of the freemen whose holdings lay round the

The English Conquest of Britain.

449

577.

moot-hill or the sacred tree where the community met from CHAP. I. time to time to deal out its own justice and to make its own laws. Here new settlers were admitted to the freedom of the township, and bye-laws framed and headman and tithing-man chosen for its governance. Here ploughland and meadow-land were shared in due lot among the villagers, and field and homestead passed from man to man by the delivery of a turf cut from its soil. Here strife of farmer with farmer was settled according to the "customs" of the township as its elder men stated them, and four men were chosen to follow headman or ealdorman to hundred-court or war. It is with a reverence such as is stirred by the sight of the head-waters of some mighty river that one looks back to these village-moots of Friesland or Sleswick. It was here that England learned to be a "mother of Parliaments." It was in these tiny knots of farmers that the men from whom Englishmen were to spring learned the worth of public opinion, of public discussion, the worth of the agreement, the "common sense," the general conviction to which discussion leads, as of the laws which derive their force from being expressions of that general conviction. A humourist of our own day has laughed at Parliaments as "talking shops," and the laugh has been echoed by some who have taken humour for argument. But talk is persuasion, and persuasion is force, the one force which can sway freemen to deeds such as those which have made England what she is. The "talk" of the village moot, the strife and judgement of men giving freely their own rede and setting it as freely aside for what they learn to be the wiser rede of other men, is the groundwork of English history.

Small therefore as it might be, the township or village was thus the primary and perfect type of English life, domestic, social, and political. All that England has been since lay there. But changes of which we know nothing had long before the time at which our history opens grouped these little commonwealths together in larger

The

Folk.