Note 102 — Chapter XIII · THE LEGISLATION OF KING INE.

Vinogradoff (Growth of the Manor, 202) minimises the element of personal slavery in the early Anglo-Saxon community: “Even in the earliest stage of English life it could not be said that English society was a slave-holding one.... Slavery turns out not to be a fit economic and social basis for a primitive, half-agricultural, half-pastural society: the slaves are difficult to keep and awkward to deal with.... They are mostly provided with small households of their own and used as coloni.”