"The
slave," says Green, "became part of the live stock of the estate, to be
willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept
as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even
the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint.
'Mine is the calf that is born 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.
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