210
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
death no feud can arise, for the relatives who al-
lowed him to fall into, or remain in slavery, have
renounced the family bond, and forfeited both the
wergyld and the mund. If he be guilty of wrong,
he cannot make compensation in money or in chat-
tels ; for he can have no property of his own save
his skin : thus his skin must pay for him1, and the
lash be his bitter portion. He cannot defend him-
self by his own oath or the oaths of friends and
compurgators, but, if accused, must submit to the
severe, uncertain and perilous test of the ordeal.
And if, when thus hunted down, he be found guilty,
severe and ignominious punishment,—amounting,
in a case of theft, to death by flogging for men, by
burning for women,—is reserved for him2. Na-
turally and originally there can be no limitation in
the amount or the character of labour imposed upon
him, and no stipulation for reciprocal advantage
in the form of protection, food or shelter. Among
the Saxons the witej>eow at least appears to have
been bound to the soil, adscriptus glebae 3, conveyed
with it under the comprehensive phrase “ mid mete
and mid mannum : ” though in some few cases we
can trace a power, vested perhaps only in certain
public authorities, of transferring the slave from
one estate to another4. Last, but most fearful of all,
ɪ The compensation for a flogging was called hɪ'dgeld.
2 Leg. ÆiSelst. iii. § 6. Thorpe, i. 219.
• Cod. Dipl. Nos. 311,1079.
‘ Ibid. No. 311. The serfs mentioned in this document were at first
attached to the royal vill of Bensington ∙f but were now transferred to
the land of the church at Radnor, with their offspring, and their
posterity for ever.
сн. vin.]
THE UNFREE. THE SERF.
211
the taint of blood descended to his offspring, and
the innocent progeny, to the remotest generations,
were born to the same miserable fate as bowed down
the guilty or unfortunate parent.
But yet there was a gleam of hope : one solitary
ray that made even the surrounding darkness to-
lerable, and may have cheered the broken-hearted
serf through years of unrequited toil and suffering.
The law that reduced him to slavery made it also
possible that he should be restored to freedom. It
did not shut from him this blessing, however dis-
tant it might seem. Tacitus knew of Uberti among
the Germans, men who had been slaves, had been
manumitted, and were free1. Thus in yet pagan
times, general kindliness of disposition, habits of do-
mestic intercourse, perhaps the suggestions of self-
interest, may have tended to raise the condition of
the serf even to the restoration of freedom : but it
was the especial honour and glory of Christianity,
that while it broke the spiritual bonds of sin, it ever
actively laboured to relieve the heavy burthen of
social servitude. We are distinctly told that Bishop
WilfriS, on receiving the grant of Selsey from
Caedwealha of Wessex, immediately manumitted
two hundred and fifty unfortunates, whom he found
there attached to the soil,—that those, whom by
baptism he had rescued from servitude to devils,
might by the grant of liberty be rescued from servi-
tude to man2. In this spirit of charity, the clergy
obtained respite from labour for the J>eow on the
ɪ Tac. Germ. xxv.
a Bed. H. E. iv. 13
P 2