It is worth while to notice that while the double debt of both gafol and week-work was due from the _gebur_ or _villanus_ proper, and the week-work was the most servile service, yet even the mere payment of gafol was the sign of a submission to an overlordship. It had a servile taint about it, as well it might, being paid apparently part in kind and part in work. As the class of free hired labourers had not yet been born into existence under these early Saxon economic conditions, in times when the _theows_ were the servants, so the modern class of farmers or free tenants at a rent of another's land had not yet come into being. It was the 'ceorl' who lived on 'gafol land,'[172] and to pay gafol was to do service, though of a limited kind. «_Gafol_ a servile _tribute_.» The Saxon translators of the Gospels rendered the question, 'Doth your master pay tribute?'[173] by the words '_gylt he gafol?_' And they used the same word _gafol_ also in translating the counter question, 'Of whom do kings take _tribute_, of their own people or of aliens?' «Bede.» So when Bede described the northern conquest of Ethelfred, king of the Northumbrians, over the Britons in A.D. 603, and spoke of the inhabitants as being either exterminated or subjugated, and their lands as either cleared for new settlers or _made tributary_ to the English, King Alfred in his translation expressed [p145] the latter alternative by the words 'set to gafol'--_to gafulgyldum gesette_.[174] No doubt the Teutonic notion of a subjugated people was that of a people reduced to serfdom or villenage. _They_--the conquerors--were the nation, the freemen. The conquered race were the aliens, subjected to _gafol_ and servitude. «Parable of 'the unjust steward.'» Thus, recurring to the Saxon translation of the parable of 'the unjust steward,' one may recognise how perfectly naturally everything seemed to the translators to transfer itself to a Saxon thane's estate, and to translate itself into Saxon terms.[175] The '_hlaford_' of the '_tun_' or manor had his '_tun-gerefa_' or reeve, just as the Saxon thane had. The land in villenage was occupied not by mere trade debtors of the lord, as our version has it, but by '_gafol-gyldan_'--tenants to whom land and goods of the lord had been entrusted, as Saxon tenants were entrusted with their 'setene,' and who, therefore, paid _gafol_ or tribute in kind. The natural _gafol_ of the tenant of an olive-garden would be so many 'sesters' of oil. The tenant of corn land would pay for _gafol_, like the English tenant of a yard-land _inter alia_ so [p146] many 'mittan' of wheat; and it was the duty of the unrighteous 'tun-gerefa,' or reeve of the manor, to collect the _gafol_ from these tenants, as it was the duty of the Saxon thane's reeve to gather the dues from his servile tenants.