The old English manor Author:Charles McLean Andrews Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. The Lord And The Tenantry. We have now taken a bird's-eye view of the surroundings within which the daily life of the manor was spent, and are re... more »ady to return to the discussion of the persons who took part in this life and activity. Who these were we have already indicated in the description of the manor itself but a more careful examination may now be made. First as to the status of the lord and the people who tilled his lands. In analyzing such status we come at once upon lines of distinction not easy to explain in terms of the present day. The simplest distinction which can be made between the various classes of men is that between the free and the unfree. But freedom in our sense was not in those days the desirable quantity that it is now. Such a condition as that of even approximately complete freedom would not have been understood by the Anglo- Saxon ceorl. Freedom was purely a relative quantity; it was not an abstract conception ; it was freedom in respect of some one or something else, either the lord, the state, the Church or the lands which the individual himself cultivated. The king alone was free in respect of all other men; the thegn was free in respect of all save the king and the state, toward whom he was in bond for certain duties; the ceorl was in bond to his lord and the land on which he dwelt, he was only technically a liber homo, free before the law and privileged to take oath, bear arms and receive wergeld; but in respect of other men he was free only when contrasted with the slave, in other words he was in a position of greater or less serfdom; while the slave was in bond toward all, a mere chattel, having no rights properly so called, tied to the soil, sold with it and classed among his lord's cattle. The king alone was free, the slave alone ...« less