Their general character however is that of a record of bargain and sale between different parties: it may be indeed presumed that emancipation would follow, but there is no positive statement that it did. The following class of cases perhaps approaches nearest to such a _charta ingenuitatis_: “By this book of the Gospels it appeareth that Ælfwig the Red hath bought himself out, from Abbat Ælfsige and all the convent, with one pound. Whereof is witness all the brotherhood at Bath. Christ blind him who turneth away this record[425]!” But this is only a memorandum in a copy of the Gospels, no charter of manumission; and I presume that the sheriff would have required some much more definite and legal act, before he looked upon Ælfwig the Red as a freeman. Probably he was duly made free at the altar of the abbey church or at the door[426]. Of this subsequent process we have a good example in the book of St. Petroc. ----- Footnote 416: Leg. Will. Conq. iii. § 15. Footnote 417: “Qui servum suum liberat, in aecclesia, vel mercato, vel comitatu, vel hundreto, coram testibus et palam faciat, et liberas ei vias et portas conscribat apertas, et lanceam et gladium, vel quae liberorum arma sunt, in manibus ei ponat.” Leg. Hen. I. lxxviii. § 1. Hence the manumitted serf is called freo ⁊ færewyrð, _free and fareworthy_, that is, having the right to go whither he chooses. Footnote 418: Leg. Rotharis, Langob, Reg. cap. 225. Footnote 419: Leg. Roth. Langob. Reg. cap. 226. Footnote 420: Leg. Wiht. § 8. Footnote 421: “Per omnes terras suas, de triginta hominibus numeratis, tredecim manumisit, quemadmodum eum sors docuit, _ut in quadrivio positi pergerent quocunque voluissent_.” Hist. Ram. 29. Footnote 422: See Eichhorn, i. 333. Such a person resembles the Langobardic freedman _per impans_. Ibid. p. 331. I imagine the principle upon which the wergyld went to the king, to be this: the freedman either never had a free mǽgð, or they had forfeited the mǽgsceaft by suffering him to be reduced to serfage. Compare Leg. Eádw. § 9. Footnote 423: Leg. Hen. I. lxxviii. § 3. That is, that he is no longer liable to corporal punishment like a serf. Footnote 424: “Qui vero per chartam ingenuitatis dimissi sunt liberi,” etc. Capit. Bajuvar. an. 788. cap. 7 (Georgisch. p. 548). Eichhorn, i. 332. Footnote 425: Cod. Dipl. 1350. Footnote 426: Every lawyer knows the value of the _ad ostium aecclesiae_, at any rate in matters of dower. It implies perfect publicity. ----- “This book beareth witness that Ælfsige bought a woman called Ongyneðel, and her son Gyðiccæl, of Ðurcil for half a pound, at the church-door in Bodmin: and he gave to Ælfsige the portreeve and Maccos the hundred-man, fourpence as toll. Then came Ælfsige who bought these persons, and took them, and freed them, ever sacless, on Petroc’s altar, in the witness of these _good men_; that is, Isaac the priest[427],” etc.