SERETH', an important affluent of the Danube. rises in the Austrian crownland of Galicia, runs southward through almost the whole length of Moldavia, and joins the Danube 5 m. above Galatz, after a course of 300 miles.
SERF (Lat. semis, a slave). A numerous class of the population of Europe known as serfs or villeins were in a state of slavery during the early middle ages. In some cases this serf population consisted of an earlier race, who had been subjugated by the con querors; but there were also instances of persons from famine or other pressing cause selling themselves into slavery, or even surrendering themselves to churches and monas teries for the sake of the benefits to be derived from the prayers of their masters. Dif ferent as was the condition of the serf in different countries and at different periods, his position was on the whole much more favorable than that of the slave under the Roman law. Ile had certain acknowledged rights—and this was more particularly the case with the classes of serfs who were attached to the soil. In England. prior to the Norman conquest, a large proportion of the population were in a servile position, either as domestic slaves or as cultivators of the land. The name of nativtts, generally applied to the serfs, seems to indicate that they belonged to the native race, the earliest possessors of the soil. The powers of the master over his serf were very extensive, thoir principal limitations being, that a master who killed his serf was bound to pay a fine to the king, and that a serf deprived of his eye or tooth by his master was entitled to his liberty. The Norman conquest made little change in the position of the serf. The lowest class of serfs were the villeins in gross, who were employed in menial household servieK and were the personal property of their lords, who might sell them or export them to foreign countries; while the most numerous class, foreign who were employed in agriculture, andattached to the soil, were called villeins regardant. These latter, though in some respects in a better position than the villeins in gross, might be severed from the land, and con. veyed apart from it by their lord. They were incapable of enjoying anything like a complete right to property, inasmuch as it was held. in accordance with the principles of the Roman law, that whatever the slave acquired was his peculium, which belonged to his lord, who might seize it at his pleasure. Ty a peculiarity in the usages of Britain, the condition of a child as regards freedom or servitude followed the father, and not the mother, and therefore the bastards of female villeins might be free. In France and
Germany, besides the classes of serf alluded to, there were others whose servitude was of a milder description, and who were only bound to fixed duties and payments in respect of their lands.
The abolition of serfdom in western Europe was a very gradual process, various causes having combined to bring it about. The church both inveighed against the practice of ,keeping Christians in bondage, and practiced manumission to a large extent. In the course of time, usage greatly modified the rights and liabilities of the serf, whose position must have been considerably altered when we find him making stipulations regarding the amount of his services, and purchasing his own redemption. The towns afforded in more than one way a means of emancipation. A serf residing a year in a borough without challenge on the part of his lord, became ipso facto a free man; and the result of experience showed that the industry of the free laborer was quite as productive as that of the serf. At all events, serfdom died out in England without any special enactment; yet it was not wholly excinet in the latter half of the 16th e., for we find a commission issued in 1574 by queen Elizabeth, to inquire into the lands and goods of all her bondsmen and bondswomen in the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and Gloucester, in order to compound with them for their manumission, that they might enjoy all their lands and goods as freedmen. In a few rare instances, liability to servile ditties and payments in respect of lands seem to have continued down to the n ign of Charles I. In Scotland, as in England, serfdom disappeared by insensible degrees; but a remarkable form of it continued to survive down to the closing years of last century. Colliers and salters were bound by the law, independent of paction, on entering to a coal-work or salt-mine, to perpetual service there; and in case of sale or alienation of the ground on which the works were situated, the right to their services passed without any express giant to the purchaser. The sons of the collier and salter could follow no occupation but that of their father, and were not at liberty to seek for employment anywhere else than in the'mines to which they had been attached by birth. Statutes 15 Geo. III. c. 28 and 39 Geo. III. c. 56. restored these classes of workmen to the rights of freemen and citizens, and abolished the last remnant of slavery in the British islands.