176
THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND.
[book I.
the presence and protection of an armed force such
as the gesf‰s constituted, must have gradually
produced a disposition to secure their favour even
at the expense of the free nobles and settlers : and
a Mark that wished to entrust its security and its
interests to a powerful soldier, would probably soon
acquiesce in his assuming a direction and leader-
ship in their affairs, hardly more consistent with
their original liberty, than the influence which a
modern nobleman may establish by watching, as
it is called, over the interests of the Registration.
Even the old nobles by blood, who gradually beheld
themselves forced down into a station of compara-
tive poverty and obscurity, must have early hastened
to give in their adhesion to a new order of things
which held out peculiar prospects of advantage to
themselves ; and thus, the communities deserted by
their natural leaders, soon sunk into a very sub-
ordinate situation, became portions of larger uni-
ties under the protection, and ultimately the rule,
of successful adventurers, and consented without a
struggle to receive their comités into those offices
of power and distinction which were once conferred
by popular election.
As the gesiiδas were not free, and could not take
a part in the deliberations of the freemen at the
folcmot, or in the judicial proceedings, except in
as far as they were represented by their chief,
means for doing justice between themselves became
necessary : these were provided by the establish-
ment of a system of law, administered in the lord’s
court, by his officers, and to which all his depen-
CH. vπ.J
THE NOBLE BY SERVICE.
177
dants were required to do suit and service as amply
as they would, if free, have been bound to do in
the folcmot. But the law, administered in such a
court, and in those formed upon its model in the
lands of the comités themselves,—a privilege very
generally granted by the king, at least in later
periods1,—was necessarily very different from that
which could prevail in the court of the freemen :
it is only in a lord’s court that we can conceive
punishments to have arisen which affected life and
honour, and fealty with all its consequences to have
attained a settled and stringent form, totally un-
known to the popular judicature. Forfeiture, or
rather excommunication, and pecuniary mulcts,
which partook more of the nature of damages than
of fine, were all that the freeman would subject
himself to under ordinary circumstances. Expul-
sion, degradation, death itself might be the portion
of him whose whole life was the property'of a lord,
ɪ Eadweard of Wessex in 904 transferred his royal rights in Taunton
to the see of Winchester. He says : “ Concessi ut episςopi homines,
tarn nobiles quam ignobiles (i. e. XII hynde and II hynde) in praefato
rure degentes, hoc idem ius in omni haberent dignitate (had), quo régis
homines perfruuntur, regalibus Iiscis Commorantes : et omnium saecu-
Iarium rerum iudicia ad usus praesulum exerceantur eodem modo quo
regalium negotiorum discutiuntur iudicia. Praedictae etiaɪn villae
mercimonium quod Anglice tSæs tunes cyping appellatur, Censusque
omnis eivilis, sanctae dei aecclesiae in Wintonia civitate sine retracta-
tionis obstaculo cum omnibus commodis aeternaliter deserviat.” Cod.
Bipl. No. 1084. He had previously granted an immunity from regal
and comitial interference ; the result of which was to place all judicial
and fiscal functions in the hands -of the bishop’s reeve instead of the
sheriff, or the king’s burgreeve. The document furnishes an admirable
example of an Immunity, or, as it is technically called in the Anglo-
saxon law, a grant of Sacn and S6cn.
VOL. I. N