alone in this movement. In all
the larger towns the same discontent prevailed, the same social growth
called for new institutions, and in their silent revolt against the
oppression of the Merchant-gild the Craft-gilds were training themselves
to stand forward as champions of a wider liberty in the Barons' War.

[Sidenote: The Villein]

Without the towns progress was far slower and more fitful. It would seem
indeed that the conquest of the Norman bore harder on the rural
population than on any other class of Englishmen. Under the later kings
of the house of AElfred the number of absolute slaves and the number of
freemen had alike diminished. The pure slave class had never been
numerous, and it had been reduced by the efforts of the Church, perhaps
by the general convulsion of the Danish wars. But these wars had often
driven the ceorl or freeman of the township to "commend" himself to a
thegn who pledged him his protection in consideration of payment in a
rendering of labour. It is probable that these dependent ceorls are the
"villeins" of the Norman epoch, the most numerous class of the Domesday
Survey, men sunk indeed from pure freedom and bound both to soil and
lord, but as yet preserving much of their older rights, retaining their
land, free as against all men but their lord, and still sending
representatives to hundred-moot and shire-moot. They stood therefore far
above the "landless man," the man who had never possessed even under the
old constitution political rights, whom the legislation of the English
kings had forced to attach himself to a lord on pain of outlawry, and who
served as household servant or as hired labourer or at the best as
rent-paying tenant of land which was not his own. The Norman knight or
lawyer however saw little distinction between these classes; and the
tendency of legislation under the Angevins was to blend all in a single
class of serfs. While the pure "theow" or absolute slave disappeared
therefore the ceorl or villein sank lower in the social scale. But though
the rural population was undoubtedly thrown more together and fused into
a more homogeneous class, its actual position corresponded very
imperfectly with the view of the lawyers. All indeed were dependents on a
lord. The manor-house became the centre of every English village. The
manor-court was held in its hall; it was here that the lord or his
steward received homage, recovered fines, held the view of frank-pledge,
or enrolle