Page:Landholding in England.djvu/22

 of England to meet him at Salisbury, there to take the oath of allegiance. It has been supposed by some historians that this marks a radical change in the position of English landowners. But an old chronicler, Eadmerus, a monk of Canterbury, who wrote in the reign of Henry I., gives the 71 Laws of Edward the Confessor, and says: "These are the laws and customs which King William granted to the whole people of England after he had conquered the land, and they are those which King Edward, his predecessor, observed before him." These freemen were not vassals-vassalage was unknown to the Saxons. They were the holders of "udall" land. Having thus made it their interest to be faithful to him, William went back to Normandy, for his last war of devastation; his famous career ended ignobly with the burning of Mantes.

The Norman manor answered pretty exactly to the Saxon hide. The names given to both in Domesday are all equivalents for "homestead."

A careful study of Domesday Book will, I think, convince us that slaves (called servi) were at anyrate nothing like so numerous as any of those classes of men who were more or less free.

First above the servi seem to have come the colliberti—described as "half-free"; free as to person, but not as to tenement. They could go where they chose, "but not with their land." This refers to a curious right under the