Note 144 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

The line of demarcation between free and unfree cultivators has not, however, always been drawn in a strict, scientific manner. Ashley, speaking of the 11th—14th centuries, says: “The term libere tenentes is elastic enough to cover men in very different positions.… But the larger number of those known by that name were, clearly, virgate-holding villeins or the descendants of such, who had commuted their more onerous labour services of two or three days a week for a money or corn payment, and had been freed from what were regarded as the more servile “incidents” of their position. What these exactly were, or, indeed, what was understood by free tenure, it is difficult now to determine, precisely because the lawyers and landlords of the time did not themselves know. The most widely spread idea was that inability to give a daughter in marriage or to sell an ox or a horse without the lord’s consent, for which a fine had to be paid, was the certain mark of servile tenure”144.