“lord of the manor of Estone.” [9. Or, _in capite_.] [10. _i.e._ sub-tenants.] § 4. THE INHABITANTS OF THE MANORS—Besides the lord himself (whether king, noble, or sub-tenant), with his personal retainers, and generally a parish priest or some monks, there were three other classes of inhabitants. (1) First came the _villeins_, who formed 38 per cent. of the whole population recorded in Domesday, and who held their land in virgates, a _virgate_ being some thirty acres of arable land, scattered of course in plots (cf. p. 20) among the common fields of the manor, together with a house and messuage in the village. These villeins were often called _virgarii_ (or _yardlings_), from this term virgate. (2) Below the villeins came the _cottars_, or _bordars_, a class distinct from and below the former, who probably held {13} only some five or ten acres of land and a cottage, and did not even possess a plough, much less a team of oxen, apiece, but had to combine among themselves for the purpose of ploughing. They form 32 per cent. of the Domesday population. Finally came (3) _the slaves_, who were much smaller in numbers than is commonly supposed, forming only 9 per cent. of the Domesday population. Less than a century after the Conquest these disappear and merge into the cottars. § 5. THE CONDITION OF THESE INHABITANTS—The chief feature of the social condition of these classes of people was that they were subject to a lord. They each depended upon a superior, and no man could be either lordless or landless; for all persons in _villeinage_, which included everyone below the lord of the manor, were subject to a master, and bound to the land, except, of course, “free tenants” (p. 15). But even against their lord the villeins had certain rights which had to be recognized. They had, moreover, many comforts and little responsibility, except to pay their dues to their lord. Moreover, it was possible for a villein to purchase a remission of his services, and become a “free tenant.” Or he might become such by residing in a town for a year and a day, and being a member of a town gild, as long as during that period he was unclaimed by his lord. And in course of time the villein’s position came to be this—he owed his lord the customary services (see p. 14) whereby his lord’s land was cultivated; but his lord could not refuse him his customary rights in return—“his house and lands, and rights of wood and hay”—and in relation to everyone but his lord he was a perfectly free citizen. His condition tended to improve, and up to the time of the Great Plague (1348) a large number of villeins had become actually free, having commuted their services {14} for money payments. What these services were we shall now explain. But finally, we wish to point out that the state of villeinage and of serfage was practically the same thing in two aspects; the first implying the fact that the villein was bound to the soil, the second that he was subject to a master.