would have entailed upon him the forfeiture of his own real property, should not be permitted to interfere with the rights of the reversioner: lǽnland therefore could not be taken from the owner, for the crime of the tenant. In the year 900 a certain Helmstán was guilty of theft, and the sheriff seized all his chattels to the king: and Ordláf entered upon the land, “because it was his lǽn that Helmstán sat on: that he could not forfeit[564].” A similar principle prevailed in grants for lives, especially where ecclesiastical corporations were the grantors and reversioners; and which, though to a certain extent they conveyed estates of bócland, gave, strictly speaking, lǽn or beneficiary tenures[565]. But as the clergy were not always quite sure of meeting with fair treatment, we find them not unfrequently introducing into their instruments a provision that no forfeiture shall be valid against their rights; this, from the great strictness with which the provisions of a book or charter were always construed, and in general from the fear of violating what had been confirmed by the signature of the cross and the threat of eternal punishment, may have had some effect. In such cases it may be presumed that the guilt of the grantee entirely cancelled the grant; the remaining lives, if any, losing the advantage which they derived through the grantee; forfeiture really taking effect, but for the benefit of the grantor, not the civil power[566]. The tenant of lǽnland, who by his services acquired the good will of the lord, might hope to have his tenure improved, if not into an absolute possession of bócland, yet into one for his own or more lives. In a translation of St. Augustine of Hippo’s Soliloquia, attributed like so many other things to Ælfred of Wessex, there occurs this passage[567]: ----- Footnote 559: Wages of course need not comprise money, or be the result of a compact between free parties. We pay a slave wages, though no _penny fee_. It is a different question whether it is advisable that labourers should be slaves: the Anglosaxons had their peculiar views on that subject, which we are not to discuss now. Footnote 560: “Alio quoque tempore, in adolescentia sua, dum adhuc esset in populari vita, quando in montanis iuxta fluvium, quod dicitur Leder, cum aliis pastoribus, pecora domini sui pascebat,” etc. Anon. Cuðberht, cap. 8. (Beda, Op. Min. ii. 262.) “Contigit eum remotis in montibus commissorum sibi pecorum agere custodiam.” Beda, Cuðb. c. 4. Op. Min. ii. 55. The Hungarian Salas on the Pusta is much the same thing, at the present day. Footnote 561: The “Rectitudines Singularum Personarum” inform us that they were very different in different places, which necessarily would be the case. We can imagine that a butsecarl or fisherman of Kent was not so anxious to have a holding as a peasant in Gloucestershire. Footnote 562: