followed him in war; and they sought justice in his court in all their private differences.  These may be considered as freeholders of the better sort, or indeed a sort of lesser gentry therefore, as they were not the absolute dependants, but in some measure the peers of their lord, when they sued in his court, they claimed the privilege of all the German freemen, the right of judging one another:  the lord’s steward was only the register.  This domestic court, which continued in full vigor for many ages, the Saxons called Hall mote, from the place in which it was held; the Normans, who adopted it, named it a Court-Baron.  This court had another department, in which the power of the lord was more absolute.  From the most ancient times the German nobility considered themselves as the natural judges of those who were employed in the cultivation of their lands, looking on husbandmen with contempt, and only as a parcel of the soil which they tilled:  to these the Saxons commonly allotted some part of their outlands to hold as tenants at will, and to perform very low services for them.  The differences of these inferior tenants were decided in the lord’s court, in which his steward sat as judge; and this manner of tenure probably gave an origin to copyholders.[57] Their estates were at will, but their persons were free:  nor can we suppose that villains, if we consider villains as synonymous to slaves, could ever by any natural course have risen to copyholders; because the servile condition of the villain’s person would always have prevented that stable tenure in the lands which the copyholders came to in very early times.  The merely servile part of the nation seems never to have been known by the name of Villains or Ceorles, but by those of Bordars, Esnes, and Theowes.

[Sidenote:  Tithing Court.]

As there were large tracts throughout the country not subject to the jurisdiction of any thane, the inhabitants of which were probably some remains of the ancient Britons not reduced to absolute slavery, and such Saxons as had not attached themselves to the fortunes of any leading man, it was proper to find some method of uniting and governing these detached parts of the nation, which had not been brought into order by any private dependence.  To answer this end, the whole kingdom was divided into Shires, these into Hundreds, and the Hundreds into Tithings.[58] This division was not made, as it is generally imagined, by King Alfred, though he might have introduced better regulations concerning it; it prevailed on the continent, wherever the Northern nations had obtained a settlement; and it is a species of order extremely obvious to all who use the decimal notation:  when for the purposes of government they divide a county, tens and hundreds are the first modes of division which occur.  The Tithing, which was the smallest of these divisions, consisted of ten heads of families, free, and of some consideration.  These held a court every fortnight,