198 THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND. [book r.
called a witej>eow, convict, or criminal slave. These
are the servi redemptions of Henry the First.
Serfs by force or power are not those comprised
in the first class of these divisions, or serfs by the
fortune of war : these of course have lost their free-
dom through superior force. But the class under
consideration are such as have been reduced to ser-
vitude by the legal act of those who had a right to
dispose of them ; as, for instance, a son or daughter
by the act of the father1. It is painful to record
a fact so abhorrent to our Christian feelings, but
there cannot be the least doubt that this right was
both admitted and acted upon. The father, upon
whose will it literally depended whether his child
should live or not, had a right at a subsequent pe-
riod to decide whether the lot of that child should
be freedom or bondage 2. Illegitimate children, the
offspring of illicit intercourse with his wyln or
peowen, may have formed the majority of those thus
disposed of by a father : but in times of scarcity,
it is to be feared that even the issue of legitimate
ɪ The wife, by the act of the husband, I think very doubtful, in point
of right. In point of fact this case may have occurred much more fre-
quently than our records vouch.
a The illegitimate offspring of his own wife, a husband was not
likely to spare. An old German tale records this fact. Her lord re-
turning from a long absence and finding a child which could not be
his own in the house, was told by the faithless mother, that when
walking in the fields a flake of snow had fallen into her bosom and
impregnated her. Afterwards the husband took the child to Italy
and sold him there, excusing himself to the mother by the assertion
that the heat of the sun had melted the snow-child :—
“ De nive conceptual quern mater adultéra finxit ;
Hunc dominus vendens Iiquefactum sole retulit.”
CH. vrn.J
THE UNFREE. THE SERF.
199
marriage was not always spared1. The Frisians,
when oppressed by the amount of Roman tribute,
sold their wives and children : “Ac primo boves
ipsos, mox agros, postremo corpora coniugum aut
Iiberorum servitio tradebant2:” this is however an
exceptional case, and the sale of wives and children
appears only to have been resorted to as a last re-
source. But the very restriction to the exercise of
this right, within particular Iimitsof time—which we
may believe the merciful intervention of the church
to have brought about—-speaks only too plainly for
its existence in England. Even as late as the end
of the seventh century, and after Christianity had
been established for nearly one hundred years in
this country, we find the following very distinct
and clear recognitions of the right, in books of
discipline compiled by two several archbishops for
the guidance of their respective clergy. In the
Poenitential of Théodore, archbishop of Canterbury,
occurs this passage: “Pater filium suum septem
annorum, necessitate compulsus, potestatem habet
tradere in servitium ; deinde, sine voluntate filii,
Iicentiam tradendi non habet3.” In the somewhat
‘ Lingard (A. S. Church, i. 46) accuses the pagan Saxons of Belling
their children into foreign slavery. I am not sure that this is not as-
serted too strongly by this estimable author, who appears unjustly to
depreciate the Saxons, in order to enhance the merit of their con-
vertors. I admit the probability of the fact, only because the right is
a direct corollary from the paternal power, and because Archbishops
Theodore and Ecgberht (the first a Roman missionary) recognize it ;
but I cannot suppose its exercise to have been common.
2 Tac. Annal, iv. 72.
3 Theodori Arch. Cant., Liber Poenitentialis, xxviii. Thorpe, A. S.
Laws, ii. ɪg.