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Rh west, of critical economic importance, arose from the fact that the east was the home of liberty. In the Danish districts the peasantry, whether English or Danish by descent, were far less exploited in the interests of the upper classes than in the English districts. To begin with, there were far fewer actual slaves or "theows" in these parts than elsewhere. In East Anglia the slaves formed only 4 per cent. of the population, whereas in the Midlands they formed 14 to 15 per cent., on the Welsh border 17 per cent. and in Cornwall 21 per cent. But this is not the whole story. In the Danish districts considerable sections of the inferior cultivating classes rendered far lighter dues for their holdings, and performed far fewer services for their lords than in the Midlands or in Wessex. One reason for this was that the overlordship of the soil was far more divided and broken up in the Danelaw than in the south and west. In the Chiltern districts, in Kent and in Wessex generally, it was fairly common for a village to have only one lord; but in the Danelaw, as often as not, four or five lords were concurrently interested in even quite small villages, and it is not impossible to point to instances in which a village was shared between as many as nine or ten. At the same time, in the Danelaw the tie between a lord and his men was far looser as regards a large section of the peasantry than in Mercia or Wessex, for considerable numbers of the classes described in the Domesday Survey as "liberi homines" and "sochemanni" still had the right of choosing their lords and, from time to time, of transferring their allegiance from one lord to another. As the phrase runs in the Domesday Survey, "they could recede from their lord without his license and go with their land where they would." The natural consequence followed that it was difficult for the lord, whose patronage they did acknowledge, to get any burdensome rents or services out of them.

Let us now turn to consider what is known about the ranks of English society outside the Danelaw in the earlier years of the eleventh century. One has to admit that this is an obscure subject, but some direct light is thrown on it by the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum. This Anglo-Saxon tract is unfortunately undated, and nothing is known of its origin; but it seems to be a memorandum drawn up by the land-agent of a monastic or episcopal estate, comprising in all probability several villages, in order to keep a record of the services due from the various grades of tenants who were under his management. It is thought to have been put together about 1025, and along with it is found a second tract, which sets forth the duties of the land-agent, calling him at one time a gerefa or reeve and at another a scyrman. The occurrence of this second term has led some commentators to think that the writer of the tracts might have been a shire-reeve. but scyrman carries no such implication, being used indifferently of any official person. The author of the Rectitudines begins his treatise by describing the services of the thegn. By that term he clearly did not mean a king's