Without attempting to express an opinion as to these two hypotheses, we may take "Domesday Book" as our starting point. From that book, we learn that over the greater part of England, villeins, cottars or bordars, and slaves made up the whole of the population of the country apart from the governing classes. Subsequent to the Norman Conquest, we can trace a rapid increase in the number of free tenants, due to a variety of circumstances, of which the chief were (1) the commutation by villeins of their services for money payments, (2) the enclosure and letting out of portions of the waste land, (3) the renting of portions of the lord's own demesne. The term "free tenants," as Professor Ashley has shown, is elastic enough to cover men in very different positions, "from the military tenant who had obtained a considerable holding in return for service in the field, down to the tenant who had received at a money rent one or two acres of the demesne, or of new cleared ground."[120] The larger number of those who were known as free tenants were clearly virgate-holding villeins or their descendants, who had commuted their more onerous labour services of two or three days a week for a fixed sum of money, and who had been freed from what were regarded as the more servile "incidents" of their position. In practice the manorial system implied that freedom of movement and choice of occupation scarcely existed. Even before serfs could send their children to school, it was necessary that the consent of the lord should be obtained, and in many cases fines were exacted before this permission was granted. Thus, in the single manor of Woolrichston, in Warwickshire, we learn that in 1361, Walter Martin paid 5s. for the privilege of putting his son "ad scholas"; in 1371, William Potter paid 13s. 4d. that his eldest son might go "ad scholas," and Stephen Prout paid 3s. 4d.; in 1335, William at Water paid for a licence for his younger son William "ad sacrum ordinem promovendum."[121] The point which we wish to emphasise here, is that the only real social distinction on a manor was that between a lord and his tenants. Between these two grades there was a great gulf fixed. Socially, they were as far asunder as the poles. Between the tenants themselves the social separation was slight. "The yardling and the cotter worked in the same way; their manner of life was the same."[122] Even the priest in charge of the majority of the village churches belonged to the same social grade as his parishioners, and, in many cases, he was as poor as any of them, and glad enough to get a few acres and to add to his income by joining in the common agriculture.[123]