Mr. Allen in his valuable notes upon the law of Henry the First (published by Thorpe in his Anglosaxon Laws, i. 609-631) has some remarks upon the whole subject, as considered by our Norman jurists. His conclusions coincide generally with mine, and he says (p. 628), “The Mirror [Sachsenspiegel] makes the marriage of the parents an essential condition to the liberty of the offspring,” etc. ----- Whatever the origin of serfage may have been, it can hardly be questioned that the lot of the serf was a hard one; and this perhaps not so much from the amount of labour required of him, as from the total irresponsibility of the master, in the eye of the law, as to all dealings between himself and his þeów. The Christian clergy indeed did all they could to mitigate its hardships, but when has even Christianity itself been triumphant over the selfishness and the passions of the mass of men! The early pagan Germans, though in general they treated their serfs well, yet sometimes slew them, under the influence of unbridled passion: “Verberare servum ac vinculis et opere coercere rarum. Occidere solent, non disciplina et severitate, sed impetu et ira, ut inimicum, nisi quod impune est[384].” The church affixed a special penance to the manslaughter of a woman by her mistress, _impetu et ira_,—an event which probably was not unusual, considering the power of a lord over his þeówen or female slave,—and generally, a penance for the slaughter of a serf by his lord without judicial authority[385]. ----- Footnote 384: Tac. Germ. xxv. Footnote 385: “Si faemina, furore zeli accensa, flagellis verberaverit ancillam suam, ita ut infra diem tertium animam cruciatu effundat, et quod incertum sit, voluntate an casu occident; si voluntate, vii annos; si casu, per quinquennii tempora, ac legitima poenitentia, a communione placuit abstinere.” Poen. Theod. xxi. § 13. “Si quis servum proprium, sine conscientia iudicis, occiderit, excommunicatione vel poenitentia biennii reatum sanguinis emundabit.” Ibid. § 12. Even as late as the seventeenth century in France, it appears that it was usual to flog the valets, pages and maids, in noble houses. Tallemant des Réaux mentions a riot which arose in Paris from a woman’s being whipped to death by her mistress, in August 1651. See his Historiettes, viii. 80; x. 255, etc. -----