call slavery. This condition among our forefathers was termed þeówet; the _servus_ was þeów, the _ancilla_ þeówen; or, as the original serfs of the English were the vanquished Britons, Wealh and Wyln. ----- Footnote 335: “Servos conditionis huius per commercia tradunt, ut se quoque pudore victoriae exsolvant.” Germ. xxiv. The last member of the sentence is a bit of imaginative morality which we shall acquit the Germans of altogether. The very word _caeteris_ in the next sentence shows clearly enough that if they did sell some slaves _conditionis huius_, they kept others for menial functions. Footnote 336: “Caeteris servis, non in nostrum morem, descriptis per familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates regit. Frumenti modum dominus, aut pecoris, aut vestis, ut colono, iniungit; et servus hactenus paret.” Germ. xxv. This amounts to no more than the description of a certain class of our own copyholders, of the Slavonic holder in Bohemia or Galicia, and the peasant on a _noble session_ in Hungary. Footnote 337: This is the obvious meaning of the passage, which has however been disputed, in defiance of sense and Latin: see Walther’s edition, vol. iv. 58. The general rule in the text is true, but where there were slaves they were used in the house, under the superintendence of the family. This of course applies more strongly to later historical periods, when the slaves (domestics) had become much more numerous, and the ladies much less domestic. Footnote 338: Deut. Rechtsalt. p. 305. ----- Without confining ourselves to the definition in the law of Henry the First, we may distribute the different kinds of slaves into classes, according to the different grounds of slavery[339]. Thus they are serfs _casu_ or _natura_, and the serfs _casu_ comprise serfs by the fortune of war, by marriage, by settlement, by voluntary surrender, by crime, by superior legal power, and by illegal power or injustice. The remaining class are serfs _natura_, or by birth. ----- Footnote 339: “Servi alii natura, alii facto, et alii empcione, et alii redempcione, alii sua vel alterius dacione servi, et si quae sunt aliae species huiusmodi, quas tamen omnes volumus sub uno servitutis membro constitui, quem casum ponimus appellari, ut ita dictum sit, servi alii casu, alii genitura.” Leg. Hen. I. lxxvi. § 3. ----- The serfs by fortune of war were those who were not left under the public law to enjoy a portion of their ancient freedom and possessions, but were actually reduced to a state of prædial or menial servitude by their captors, and either reserved for household drudgery or sold, at their arbitrary will. The Cassandra and Andromache of Grecian story stand here side by side with our own German Gudrún. This part of the subject has received sufficient illustration from the tale of the thane Imma, already quoted from Beda.