AUTHORITIES:

Domesday-book, Sharon Turner, Lappenberg, Pauli, Hallam, Brougham, Vaughan, etc.

The social condition of the Britons previous to the invasion of C?sar was in all probability similar to that of their kindred Gauls. They lived in clans; the soil was held by a tenure similar to that which prevailed among the Gauls, and was tilled by clansmen or free laborers. Slavery was then, if possible, even more insignificant among the Britons than among the Gauls; and the slaves consisted of criminals and prisoners of war, and were the common property of the clan. The laboring classes were not impoverished, nor were they dependent upon the chiefs as in Gaul at the time of the Roman conquest. For various reasons Rome\'s influence did not operate so fatally on the Britons as it did on the Gauls; neither the culture of Rome nor her disorganizing and oppressive administration permeated Britain to the same extent as they did the rest of the empire. Still Roman rule seems to have altered somewhat the primitive relations between the chiefs and their clansmen, impoverishing the latter and corrupting the former. The Roman rule was propitious to slavery; it sur[Pg 224]rounded the powerful natives with dependents and chattels, while the poor gradually lost their freedom, and began to cultivate the soil less for their own sake than on account of their chiefs. The dissolution of former social relations was effected and the impoverishment of the people fearfully increased, by the uninterrupted invasions of the Picts and Scots, and by the Anglo-Saxon conquest.

The Anglo-Saxons, spreading over the land, enslaved its former owners, selling them abroad or making them work for the conquerors at home. The Anglo-Saxons planted on the soil of Britain their German mode of life and their social organism in all its details. They brought with them their bondmen and slaves, their laws and usages relating to slavery, to the possession of the soil, and to composition for crime (all of which have been explained in former pages). Under the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, the chattels consisted of the descendants of the slaves existing in Roman times, as well as natives newly enslaved, criminals, debtors and captives taken in war. The Anglo-Saxon families also had slaves of Scotch and Welsh birth, generally from the borders; while, on the other hand, many Anglo-Saxons were kept in bondage by the Scotch and Welsh. Turner says: "It is well known that a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon population was in a state of slavery; they were conveyed promiscuously with the cattle."

The Anglo-Saxon slaves were called theow esne and wite-theows, or penal slaves. Their condition was at[Pg 225]tended with all the horrors of slavery. They were kept in chains, were whipped, branded, and wore collars. They were sold in the markets, especially in London, and were at times exported beyond the sea, and found their way even to the markets of Italy and Rome. Every one knows that it was the exposition for sale of Anglo-Saxon slaves in the Roman market which resulted in the introduction of Christianity into Britain. Christianity softened the savage customs of the Anglo-Saxons, and greatly promoted emancipation; and this again increased the number of freemen and half-freemen, which formed the lower class of the population.

The division into classes—castes almost—was very rigidly observed by the Anglo-Saxons. The powers and rights of nobles, and of those who reached a high position as royal officials or owners of extensive landed property, were very great. The possession of land gave a higher political status, and conferred greater power among the Anglo-Saxons than among any of the other German tribes settled throughout Europe.

The free yeomen, or owners of land in fee simple, sought protection from the hlaford or mighty lord. For this they bartered away, partially, both their freedom and their right to the land—as was customary also among the German and all other ancient nations. The Anglo-Saxon yeomen were, in general, in a subordinate condition; they had no law, and their freedom consisted principally in having the right to change masters. The tradesmen also were, for the[Pg 226] most part, in a servile state, and were manumitted like other chattels. Some of the manumitted slaves became agricultural laborers and hired land from the clergy, the great, the thanes or the ealdormen, paying them an annual rent in produce or money; but many of them also went into the towns and became burghers. Some of the burghers, also, were subject to barons and other lords, as the king; indeed, the burghers generally were not actual freeholders, and, if they were free, often had not wholly escaped the domestic service of their masters. The condition of the immense majority of Anglo-Saxons was therefore far from real freedom.

The Norman conquest transformed many landlords into tenants, while the humbler classes passed into the hands of the new masters. They became the tenants and laborers of the Norman, for whom otherwise the conquered land would have been worthless. But the Norman conquest rendered Saxon servitude so galling, that villeinage was nearly equal to chattelhood.

The "Domesday-book" gives 25,000 as the number of slaves in England. The great bulk of the rural population was composed of bondmen, or villeins under various designations—as bordiers, geburs, cotsetlas, etc.—who were compelled to pay oppressive imposts, and submit to various degrading and oppressing servitudes. These oppressions and exactions bore most heavily on the Anglo-Saxon population.

Slaves and serfs attached to the soil might be sold in the market-place, at the pleasure of their owners. Husbands sold their wives, and parents, unable or un[Pg 227]willing to support their children, might dispose of them in the same manner. The English slave-dealer of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, sold his Anglo-Saxon commodities to the Irish. A law enacted in 1102, prohibited this "wicked trade;" but the law was eluded, the trade continued, and when Henry II. invaded Ireland, he found English slaves there, whom he manumitted. In order to increase the revenue, as also from other motives of policy, the royal power in England, as all over Europe, generally favored the oppressed; its tendency always was to curb the arbitrary exactions of the barons, to promote emancipation, and generally to aid the serfs. William the Conqueror ordered that the lords should not deprive the husbandmen of their land; he enacted regulations to prevent arbitrary enslavement, and prohibited the sale of slaves out of the country. He also enacted a law which provided that the residence of any serf or slave for a year and a day, without being claimed, in any city, burgh, walled town or castle, should entitle him to perpetual liberty.

An independent freeholding yeomanry existed in comparatively small numbers. The recklessness of the feudal barons obliged the yeomanry, for the sake of protection, to render allegiance to the manor, and thus, about a century after the conquest, almost all the small homesteads disappeared. The conquered population held their property, not by absolute right, but by a tenure from the lord. Thus all individual fre............