Beside the Villani and Servi, we meet with other descriptions of bondmen, whose condition seem to have been less abject; at least, less so than the latter. Of those one sort was called _Bordarii_, _Bordars_, or _Borderers_: they were such as held a cottage, or some small parcel of land, on condition of supplying the lord with poultry, eggs, and other small provisions for his board and entertainment. Such small estates were formerly called _Bord-lands_, now _demesnes_.—_Coliberti_ was the name of another description of bondmen among the Anglo-Saxons; and they were, it seems, a middle sort of tenants, between servile and free; they had their patrons, to whom they paid rent, and were manumised as servants used to be, but were not absolutely free. They were such of the Servi as were enfranchised, or liberated in a certain degree, but still paid some duties to the superior lord. They appear to have been held in scarcely any higher estimation than the class to which they had originally belonged.—The _Burgaris_, _Burgenses_, or _Burgesses_, was another order of bondmen among the Anglo-Saxons. They were tradesmen in great towns, and had their patrons, under whose protection they traded, and to whom they paid an acknowledgement; but some of them were in a more servile condition, and altogether under the power of the king, or other lords. {257a} Some of the above descriptions of Anglo-Saxon bondmen, or British slaves, and particularly the Villani, the Servi, and the Bordarii, were very numerous in the parts about Lynn, in the times of which we are now speaking, and long after. {257b} England did then so abound in slaves, and was so much _a land of slaves_, as to be able to carry on a trade in that commodity with other nations, and especially the _Irish_, whom English merchants, for a long time, abundantly supplied with that favourite article, out of their home stock, or native produce, with as little shame or remorse as they have in modern times supplied the West Indies and North America with the poor defenceless natives of ill-fated Africa. {257c} And yet the English was then, as well as now, a christian nation, priding herself in the fond idea of the purity and pre-eminence of her goodness, faith, and piety. Alas, for poor christianity! How often hath her venerable name been profaned and postituted on the vilest occasions, and for the basest of purposes! SECTION II. _Of the WITTENAGEMOTE and other courts_, _maxims of jurisprudence_, _institution of tythings_, _nuptial and funeral rites_, _sacerdotal_, _domestic_, _and other customs_, _among the Anglo-Saxons_.