was the fate of these voluntary thanes, not unfrequently to be numbered in the same category with the unfree by birth, and thus, in their own persons, to witness the destruction of that essential principle of all Teutonic law, the distinction between the freeman and the serf[321]. ----- Footnote 321: “Libertini non multum supra servos sunt, raro aliquod momentum in domo, nunquam in civitate; exceptis duntaxat iis gentibus, quae regnantur: ibi enim et super ingenuos et super nobiles ascendunt: apud caeteros impares libertini libertatis argumentum sunt.” Tac. Germ. xxv. ----- Great indeed ought to be the advantages which could compensate for sacrifices like these, and great in their eyes, beyond a doubt, they were. In return for freedom, the gesíð obtained a certain maintenance, the chance of princely favour, a military and active life of adventure, with all its advantages of pillage, festivals and triumphs, poets and minstrels, courtly halls and adventitious splendour; the usufruct at least, and afterwards the possession, of lands and horses, arms and jewels. As the royal power steadily advanced by his assistance, and the old, national nobility of birth, as well as the old, landed freeman sunk into a lower rank, the gesíð found himself rising in power and consideration proportioned to that of his chief: the offices which had passed from the election of the freemen to the gift of the crown[322], were now conferred upon him, and the ealdorman, duke, geréfa, judge, and even the bishop, were at length selected from the ranks of the comitatus. Finally, the nobles by birth themselves became absorbed in the ever-widening whirlpool; day by day the freemen, deprived of their old national defences, wringing with difficulty a precarious subsistence from incessant labour, sullenly yielded to a yoke which they could not shake off, and commended themselves (such was the phrase) to the protection of a lord; till a complete change having thus been operated in the opinions of men, and consequently in every relation of society, a new order of things was consummated, in which the honours and security of service became more anxiously desired than a needy and unsafe freedom; and the alods being finally surrendered, to be taken back as _beneficia_, under mediate lords, the foundations of the royal, feudal system were securely laid on every side. ----- Footnote 322: By this step, the crown became the real leader of the hereban, or posse comitatus, as well as of the gesíðas and their power: and thus also, the head of the juridical power in the counties, as well as the lords’ courts. Moreover it extended the powers and provisions of martial law to the offences of the freemen. ----- CHAPTER VIII. THE UNFREE. THE SERF.