orn of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In
the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being
continually augmented from various concurrent causes--war, crime, debt,
and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual
bondage.[16] Degradation of freemen into serfs remained a disagreeable
possibility as long as the system endured.

The agricultural population actually consisted of three elements. First
there was the lord; secondly, his free tenants; and thirdly, the
villeins or serfs. The main difference between the two latter classes
was that the free tenants had proprietary rights in their holdings and
chattels. They could buy, sell, or exchange without the lord's
intervention; and, in the event of a dispute, they could sue him or
anyone in the courts. Nevertheless, they stood in some degree of
subjection to the lord, since the geld due to the State was paid through
the lord as responsible to the sheriff for all who held land within the
manor.

Another very important distinction between the free tenants and the
villeins was the payment of _merchet_ on the marriage of daughters,
which signified that the offspring of such marriages would be the lawful
property of the lord. From this payment, and all that it implied, the
free tenants were exempt.

Predial services, on the other hand, might be rendered as well by free
tenants as by villeins. This is shown by an entry in Domesday:

"De hac terra [Longedune] tempore Regis Edwardi tenebant ix liberi
homines xviii hidas et secabant uno die in pratis domini sui et
faciebant servitium sicut eis precipiebatur."

Much would depend on the capital possessed by the free tenant, who might
elect to make good any deficiency by corporal labour. The villein had no
capital, and was simply an instrument, like the cattle of which he had
charge, in the working of the estate. He was bound to the soil with
which all his interests were linked; and he was regarded in the light of
an investment, in which the lord had a perpetual stake. It was the lord
who furnished him with the means of gaining a livelihood, and, in return
for this accommodation, the lord demanded from him, and his children
after him, lifelong service.

From the "Rectitudines Singularum Personarum," an eleventh-century
document, we learn that the _cotsetle_, for his holding of about five
acres, was required to labour for his lord on one day a week all through
the year,[17] and this was