ds to
a certain extent on the work supplied by the tenants of the tributary
land. Rents are collected, labour superintended, administrative
business transacted by a set of manorial officers.

We may divide the tillers of the soil at the time of Domesday into
five great classes[21] in order of dignity and freedom:

1. Liberi homines, or freemen.
2. Socmen.
3. Villeins.
4. Bordarii, cotarii, buri or coliberti.
5. Slaves.

The two first of these classes were to be found in large numbers in
Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, and
Northamptonshire. It is not easy to draw the line between them, but
the chief distinction lay in the latter being more burdened with
service and customary dues and more especially subject to the
jurisdictional authority of the lord.[22] They were both free, but
both rendered services to the lord for their land. Both the freemen
and the slaves by 1086 were rapidly decreasing in number.

The most numerous class[23] on the manors was the third, that of the
villeins or non-free tenants, who held their land by payment of
services to the lord. The position of the villein under the feudal
system is most complicated. He both was and was not a freeman. He was
absolutely at the disposal of the lord, who could sell him with his
tenement, and he could not leave his land without his lord's
permission. He laboured under many disabilities, such as the merchet
or fine for marrying his daughter, and fines for selling horse or ox.
On the other hand, he was free against every one but his lord, and
even against the lord was protected from the forfeiture of his
'wainage' or instruments of labour and from injury to life and
limb.[24]

His usual holding was a virgate of 30 acres of arable, though the
virgate differed in size even in the same manors; but in addition to
this he would have his meadow land and his share in the common pasture
and wood, altogether about 100 acres of land. For this he rendered the
following services to the lord of the manor:

1. Week work, or labour on the lord's demesne for two or three days a
week during most of the year, and four or five days in summer. It was
not always the villein himself, however, who rendered these services,
he might send his son or even a hired labourer; and it was the holding
and not the holder that was considered primarily responsible for the
rendering of services.[25]

2. Precarii or boon days: that is, work generall