Note 173 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

In this time the whole of Central England was covered with manors, and the mass of the rural population consisted of two classes: landlords and villeins; the latter were not all of the same condition, but none of them enjoyed entire personal freedom173. Of those cultivators who are described as freemen and socmen some could “sell their lands without leave asked or given, but others could only do so on obtaining licence from the lord”174. Finally there were some slaves175. Every freeman was a landholder, therefore there was no class of free labourers. “The labourer, as a man who depended on some employer for the opportunity and means of doing his work, seems to have been almost unknown in the eleventh century”176.