"_Heilham_: 'We will tell you the truth; his father was our villein, and held of us in villeinage land in the vill mentioned in his count, and where he was taken; and he begot this A., and also one B., his brother, of whom we are now seised, as of our villein; and this A. went out of the limits of the villeinage, and afterwards returned, and we found him at his hearth in his own nest, and we took him as our villein, as every lord may well do; and we pray judgment.' "_Metingham_: 'If my villein beget a child on my land which is in villeinage, and the child so begotten go out of the limits of my land, and six or seven or more years after return to the same land, and I find him in his own nest and at his own hearth, I can take him and tax him as my villein for the reason that his return brings him to the same condition as he was when he went.' "_Heilham_: 'He fell into the pit which he hath digged.'" We must beware of attributing this doctrine of Neifty to the Norman Conquest, which merely supplied names; in definiteness and cruelty nothing could exceed the practice of serfage under the Saxons. "The slave," says Green, "became part of the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes--war, crime, debt, and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual bondage.[16] Degradation of freemen into serfs remained a disagreeable possibility as long as the system endured. The agricultural population actually consisted of three elements. First there was the lord; secondly, his free tenants; and thirdly, the villeins or serfs. The main difference between the two latter classes was that the free tenants had proprietary rights in their holdings and chattels. They could buy, sell, or exchange without the lord's intervention; and, in the event of a dispute, they could sue him or anyone in the courts. Nevertheless, they stood in some degree of subjection to the lord, since the geld due to the State was paid through the lord as responsible to the sheriff for all who held land within the manor. Another very important distinction between the free tenants and the villeins was the payment of _merchet_ on the marriage of daughters, which signified that the offspring of such marriages would be the lawful property of the lord. From this payment, and all that it implied, the free tenants were exempt. Predial services, on the other hand, might be rendered as well by free tenants as by villeins. This is shown by an entry in Domesday: