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 hay-harvest was over fence and division were at an end again.  The plough-land alone was permanently allotted in equal 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.

[Sidenote:  Laet and Slave]

It was this sharing in the common land which marked off the freeman or ceorl from the unfree man or laet, 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 laet 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 laet 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 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 freeman 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 laet 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 which sprang mainly from debt or crime.  Famine drove men to “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