Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/135

 THE ANCESTOR 95 mon, in the seventh century, has ' freo ' and ' frea * for dominus and ' freolic ' for liberaliSy ingenuus^ and in the Old English version of the De Die Judicii^ God the Father is alluded to as the ^ mightig frea/ * rican frean,* ' lifes frean/ or more simply as ' frean/ the Lord.^ This early use of the word ' free ' to denote a noble or lord has escaped the notice of historians, and, if I mistake not, may throw a new light upon the development of early German institutions and the origin of the village community and the manor. We have seen that freedom and nobility were linked together in England France and Germany as early as the eighth century, and may reasonably infer that this connection of ideas, or at least the causes which led up to it, must date back to a period before the Saxon settlement in England. Could this double meaning of ' frea ' and ^ fryen ' and ' franc ' spring up in a free community ? Does it draw a distinction between the free tribesman and the serf, or between the noble and the depressed freeman ? Does it lead us back to the mark system or to the Roman villa, to the wild forest life when the little tribal chieftains were judges and governors over their kin, or to the mouldering ruins of a degenerate empire where every man was either a noble or a slave So much may depend upon the answer which will eventually be given to these ques- tions that I dare not undertake to deal with them ; but to give my opinion for what it may be worth, I think this other sense of the word ' free ' disposes once for all of the theory that any- thing resembling the mark system was ever introduced into England. I think that the long descent towards villeinage must have begun at a much earlier date than has hitherto been supposed. We know that before the Roman conquest the free tribesmen of Gaul had been forced to surrender their liberty and had become little more than servi of the chiefs.* The same evil influences may have been at work elsewhere. I sus- pect that the seeds of decay were already present in the German institutions described by Caesar and Tacitus, that the government was practically in the hands of the ealdormen and adalings, and 1 E.E,r.S. (1876), p. 52. 2 Ibid. 'The Oldest English Texts/ p. 149 ; and Lye's Diet. 3 See E.E.T.S. *De Domes Daege ; also the 42nd law of King Ina ; and Heywood, On Distinctions in Society (18 18), p. 274. G
 * Lord of mankind ' is rendered as ' frea mancynnes,' ^ Caed-
 * Seebohm's Early Fill. Comm. p. 305.