The _villicus_, or general steward of the manor, was sometimes a _freedman_. And there was a strong reason why a freedman was often put in a position of trust, viz. that if he should be dishonest, or show [p265] ingratitude to his patron, he was liable to be degraded again into slavery. There is an interesting fragment of Roman law which suggests that the decurio of a gang of slaves was sometimes a _freedman_, and that it was a common practice to assign to the freedman a portion of land and a _decuria_ of slaves, and no doubt oxen also to work it, thus putting him very much in the position of a colonus with slaves under him. The result of his betrayal of trust, in the case mentioned in the fragment, was his degradation, and the resumption by his patron of the _decuria_ of slaves.[369] Thus we learn that the lord of a villa might, in addition to his home farm worked by the slaves in his own homestead, have portions of the land of his estate let out, as it were, to farm to _freedmen_, each with his _decuria_ of slaves, and paying rent in produce. «Groups of tens.» There was nothing very peculiarly Roman in this system of classification in _tens_. The fact that men everywhere have ten fingers makes such a classification all but universal. But the Romans certainly did use it for a variety of purposes--for taxation and military organisation as well as in the management of the slaves of a villa. And _M. Guerard_, probably with reason, connects these _decuriæ_ of the Roman villa with the _decaniæ_, or groups of originally ten servile holdings, under a villicus or _decanus_, which are described on the estates of the Abbey of St. Germain in the Survey of the Abbot Irminon about A.D. 850.[370] So possibly a survival of a similar system may be traced also in the much earlier instances mentioned by Bede under date A.D. 655, in one of which [p266] King Oswy grants to the monastery at Hartlepool twelve _possessiunculæ_, each of '_ten families_;' and in the other of which the abbess Hilda, having obtained a '_possession of ten families_,' proceeds to build Whitby Abbey.[371] In all these cases of the Roman freedman and his _decuria_, the Gallic decanus and his _decania_, and the Saxon _possessiuncula_ of ten families, there is the bundle of ten slaves or semi-servile tenants with their holdings, treated as the smallest usual territorial division.[372] But to return to the Roman villa. The organisation of _decuriæ_ of slaves was not the only resource of the lord in the management of his estate. «The coloni, on a villa.»