Inferior to all the classes of society in feudal Europe of which we have hitherto spoken, there is reason to fear that there existed almost everyWhere, in the earlier times, a class of the positively unfree. The lot of those who were in absolute slavery excluded them from the influences of feudality as a legal and social institution—" they were not reckoned," says Palgrave, "amongst the people"—but their existence is by no means to be left out of account, in forming to ourselves a picture of European society in feudal times. Of the condition of this class, as forming the substratum of feudal society, we shall have a pretty accurate conception from the following passage, in which Lappen berg describes them in Anglo-Saxon times, if we bear in mind, on the one hand, that subsequently to the conquest their ranks were probably swelled by such of the Anglo Saxon population as was in absolute poverty; and on the other, that their position, in all the countries of Europe, was gradually ameliorated by the influences of Christianity, the spirit if not the letter of which has everywhere proved hostile to slavery. " One class of the Anglo-Saxon population, at the period of the Norman conquest, consisted of the unfree or servile (theawas, esnas), whose number, as registered in domesday-book, was little above 25,000. Of these, the majority were in a state of slavery by birth, whose forefathers had been either Roman slaves, British prisoners of war, or other enemies. Others, denominated or penal slaves, had been freemen, but reduced by the sentence of the law to the servile condition, on account of debt or delinquency. (Pal grave ut sup. i. 28.) The master had the right of selling the theow in the country, but not beyond the sea, even if he had perpetrated crime. In other respects, the condition of the servile seems to have differed little from that of the indigent free slaves who had a special wergild, half of which fell to the master and half to the kin." (Thorpe's Lap
penberg, ii. p. 320. It is probable that the vast majority of the servile class in Anglo-Saxon, and even in Norman times, consisted of persons of Celtic blood. (Pal grave ut sup. p. 26.) In proof of this fact, Lappenberg remarks that their numbers diminish as we recede from the Welsh border and from Cornwall, the places in which the Celtic or original British population is known to have taken refuge.
The social elements which counteracted and mitigated the influences of feudality in medieval life, were monarchy, the church, which vigorously promoted the emancipa tion of the unfree, and above all, the growing wealth, power, and importance of the commons. In order to free himself from the rude and insolent dictation of his great feudal vassals, the king, in almost every European state, courted the alliance of the town communties, who had remained more in the condition in which they had been left by the Romans than the inhabitants of the country, and who were consequently all along more or less opposed to the growth and influences of feudality. See MuNierrrum. By their aid, even before the formation of standing armies, something approaching to executive power was placed in the hands of the sovereign. He was thus enabled to appoint and enforce the decrees of independent judges of his own, who in the earlier times were generally churchmen, and thus greatly to circumscribe the power and influ ence of all classes of feudal proprietors over their dependents. Though the period of bloom of the F. S. was, as we have said, from the 9th to the 13th centuries, in most of the countries of Europe, it everywhere, in many of its features, long survived the latter period. Even considered as a social, and not merely as a legal institution, in which latter capacity it still exists, it was in many respects in vigor in Scotland down to the year 1747, when military tenures were abolished by statute, as dangerous to public tran quillity.