Another important advantage resulting from the Conquest was the emancipation of the lower classes. At the period of the invasion the great bulk of the population were in a servile condition. One class of the people, the churls, were attached to the land, and were transferred with it from one master to another without the power of choosing their employer, or taking any steps to improve their condition--another large class, the thews, were the absolute property of their owners. The attempts which Alfred and some of the clergy made to remedy this gigantic evil were attended with but partial success. The Conquest gave it its death blow. The convulsions which ensued afforded great numbers the wished-for opportunity of escaping from thraldom. Many of the landowners, seeing the shipwreck of their fortunes inevitable, made a virtue of necessity, and manumitted their serfs. One of William’s regulations had a tendency quietly to complete what was thus auspiciously begun. He passed a law declaring that every slave who had resided unchallenged a year and a day in any city or walled town in the kingdom, should be free for ever.[117] This law became a door of hope to many, and in due time not one slave was left in England. It had another very beneficial effect. Men were led to congregate in towns; knowledge was promoted; a stimulus was given to the cultivation of the refinements of social life; and the commoners, strong in their numbers, were induced to assert and maintain their common rights. Even the despotic measures of the king had a beneficial influence upon the lower grades of society. The thanes and aldermen of the Confessor’s days being deprived of their lands, were glad to hold a small portion of them as the inferior tenants of the great Norman barons. Hence sprung the yeomanry of England, who, in days of difficulty and danger, have often proved themselves the mainstay of the country. The Saxon noblemen, in descending from their high estate, brought with them their independence of feeling and high spirit. They were chastened but not crushed. They not only maintained their own freedom of thought, but infused a portion of their energy into the newly emancipated class below them. Formerly the difference in social position between the landed proprietor and the tiller of the soil was so great, that there could be little friendly intercourse between them, and no unity of interest; but now, by the formation of a middle class, the two extremes of society were linked together, and all classes placed in a position to benefit the rest, as well as to be benefited by them. The hope of rising in the social scale now dawned upon the lower orders.