The word _læt_ is of doubtful meaning in this passage. It might have reference to the Roman _læti_, or people of conquered tribes deported into Roman provinces at the end of a war; or it might refer to the _liti_ or _lidi_--the servile tenants mentioned in so many of the early Continental codes. We are not yet in a position to decide. But in any case these _læts_ of King Ethelbert's laws were clearly of a semi-servile class here in Kent, as were the _lidi_ in Frankish Gaul,[201] for their 'wergild' was distinctly less than that of the Kentish freemen.[202] Whether they were a [p175] different class from the _geburs_ or _villani_, or identical with them, it is not easy to decide. XI. RESULT OF THE SAXON EVIDENCE. The evidence of the earliest Saxon or Jutish laws thus leaves us with a strong presumption, if not actual certainty, that the Saxon _ham_ or _tun_ was the estate of a lord, and not of a free village community, and that it was so when the laws of the Kentish men were first codified a few years after the mission of St. Augustine. «The manorial system not of ecclesiastical origin.» It becomes, therefore, all but impossible that the manorial character of English _hams_ and _tuns_ can have had an ecclesiastical origin. The codification of the laws was possibly indeed the direct result of ecclesiastical influence no less than in the case of the Alamannic, and Bavarian, and Visigothic, and Burgundian, and Lombardic codes. In all these cases the codification partook, to some extent, of the character of a compact between the king and the Church. Room had to be made, so to speak, for the new ecclesiastical authority. A recognised status and protection had to be given to the Church for the first time, and this introduction of a new element into national arrangements was perhaps in some cases the occasion of the codification. This may be so; but at the same time it is impossible that a new system of land tenure can have been suddenly introduced with the new [p176] religion. The property granted to the Church from the first was already manorial. A _ham_ or a _tun_ could not be granted to the Church by the king, or an earl, unless it already existed as a manorial estate. The monasteries became, by the grants which now were showered down upon them, lords of manors which were already existing estates, or they could not have been transferred. «The holdings in yard-lands implied serfdom,» «because inconsistent with the equal division of allodial property among heirs.» Further, looking within the manor, whether on the royal demesne or in private hands, it seems to be clear that as far back as the evidence extends, _i.e._ the time of King Ine, the holdings--the yard-lands--were held in villenage, and were bundles of a recognised number of acre or half-acre strips in the open field, handed down from one generation to another in single succession without alteration.