In the fifteen years that followed, William recast the whole fabric of the English society and constitution, changing the realm into a feudal monarchy of the continental type. Even before the Conquest the tendency of the day had been towards feudalism, as is shown by the excessive predominance of the great earls in the days of Aethelred the Ill-counselled and Edward the Confessor, and by the decreasing importance of the smaller freeholders. As early as Eadgar's time a law bade all men below the rank of thegn to "find themselves a lord, who should be responsible for them;" that is, to commend themselves to one of their greater neighbours by a tie of personal homage. But the old-English tie of vassalage, though it placed the small freeholders in personal dependence on the thegns, left them their land as their own, and allowed a man to transfer his allegiance from one lord to another. When, however, the English thegnhood had fallen on Senlac Hill, or had lost their manors for joining in the rebellion of 1069, the condition of their former dependents was much changed for the worse. The Norman knights, who replaced the thegns, knew only the continental form of feudal tenure, where the land, as well as the personal obedience of the vassal, was deemed to belong to the lord. So the English _ceorls_, who had been the owners of their own land, though they did homage to some thegn for their persons, were reduced to the lower condition of _villeinage_--that is, they were regarded as tilling the lord's land as tenants, and receiving it from him, in return for a rent in service or in money due to him. And instead of the land being considered to belong to the farmer, the farmer was now considered to belong to the land; that is, he was bound to remain on it and till it, unless his lord gave him permission to depart, being _glebae ascriptus_, bound to the soil, though he could not, on the other hand, be dispossessed of his farm, or sold away like a slave. The condition of the _villein_ was at its very worst in William's reign, because the burden was newly imposed, and because the Norman masters, who had just taken possession of the English manors, were foreigners who did not comprehend a word of their tenants' speech, or understand their customs and habits. They felt nothing but contempt for the conquered race, whom they regarded as mere barbarians; and hard as was the letter of the feudal law, they made it worse by adding insult to mere oppression. They crushed their vassals by incessant _tallages_, or demands for money over and above the rent in money or service that was due, and allowed their Norman stewards and underlings to maltreat the peasantry as much as they chose. It should be remembered also that, evil though the plight of the villein might be, there were others even more unhappy than he, since there were many among the peasantry who were actually slaves, and could be bought and sold like cattle. These were the class who represented the original