e of charity to this people till the end of that century. In order
to estimate this we have to apply tests similar to those we applied
before to Greece and Rome and the pre-medieval church.

_The Family._--Largely Germanic in its origin, we may perhaps set down
as elemental in the English race what Tacitus said of the Germans.
They had the home virtues. They had a high regard for chastity, and
respected and enforced the family tie. The wife was honoured. The men
were poor, but when the actual pressure of their work--fighting--was
removed, idle. They were born gamblers. Much toil fell upon the wife;
but slavery was rather a form of tenure than a Roman bondage. As
elsewhere, there was in England "the joint family or household"
(Pollock and Maitland, _English Law before Edward I._ i. 31). Each
member of the community was, or should be, under some lord; for the
lordless man was, like the wanderer in Homer, who belonged to no
phratry, suspected and dangerous, and his kinsfolk might be required
to find a lord for him. There was personal servitude, but it was not
of one complexion; there were grades amongst the unfree, and the
general advance to freedom was continuous. By the 9th century the
larger amount of the slavery was bondage by tenure. In the reign of
Edward I., though "the larger half of the rural population was
unfree," yet the serf, notwithstanding the fact that he was his lord's
chattel, was free against all save his lord. A century later (1381)
villenage--that is payment for tenancy by service, instead of by
quit-rent--was practically extinguished. So steady was the progress
towards the freedom and self-maintenance of the individual and his
family.

_The Manor._--In social importance, next to the family, comes the
manor, the organization of which affected charity greatly on one side.
It was "an economic unit," the estate of a lord on which there were
associated the lord with his demesne, tenants free of service, and
villeins and others, tenants by service. All had the use of land, even
the serf. The estate was regulated by a manor court, consisting of the
lord of the manor or his representative, and the free tenants, and
entrusted with wide quasi-domestic jurisdiction. The value of the
estate depended on the labour available for its cultivation, and the
cultivators were the unfree tenants. Hence the lord, through the
manor-court, required an indem