As the gesíðas were not free, and could not take a part in the deliberations of the freemen at the folcmót, or in the judicial proceedings, except in as far as they were represented by their chief, means for doing justice between themselves became necessary: these were provided by the establishment of a system of law, administered in the lord’s court, by his officers, and to which all his dependants were required to do suit and service as amply as they would, if free, have been bound to do in the folcmót. But the law, administered in such a court, and in those formed upon its model in the lands of the comites themselves,—a privilege very generally granted by the king, at least in later periods[313],—was necessarily very different from that which could prevail in the court of the freemen: it is only in a lord’s court that we can conceive punishments to have arisen which affected life and honour, and fealty with all its consequences to have attained a settled and stringent form, totally unknown to the popular judicature. Forfeiture, or rather excommunication, and pecuniary mulcts, which partook more of the nature of damages than of fine, were all that the freeman would subject himself to under ordinary circumstances. Expulsion, degradation, death itself might be the portion of him whose whole life was the property of a lord, to be by him disposed of at his pleasure. Hence the forfeiture of lands for adultery and incontinence, and hence even Ælfred affixes the penalty of death to the crime of hláfordsyrwe, or conspiracy against a lord[314], while manslaughter could still be compounded for by customary payments. One or two special cases may be quoted to show how the relation of the gesíð to his chief modified the general law of the state. Footnote 313: Eádweard of Wessex in 904 transferred his royal rights in Taunton to the see of Winchester. He says: “Concessi ut episcopi homines, tam nobiles quam ignobiles (i. e. XII hynde and II hynde) in praefato rure degentes, hoc idem ius in omni haberent dignitate (hád), quo regis homines perfruuntur, regalibus fiscis commorantes: et omnium saecularium rerum iudicia ad usus praesulum exerceantur eodem modo quo regalium negotiorum discutiuntur iudicia. Praedictae etiam villae mercimonium quod Anglice ðæs túnes cýping appellatur, censusque omnis civilis, sanctae dei aecclesiae in Wintonia civitate sine retractationis obstaculo cum omnibus commodis aeternaliter deserviat.” Cod. Dipl. No. 1084. He had previously granted an immunity from regal and comitial interference; the result of which was to place all judicial and fiscal functions in the hands of the bishop’s reeve instead of the sheriff, or the king’s burgreeve. The document furnishes an admirable example of an _Immunity_, or, as it is technically called in the Anglosaxon law, a grant of _Sacn and Sócn_.