Even in the eighth century Ini found it necessary to enact, that if a man took land on condition of gafol or produce-rent, and his lord endeavoured to raise his rent also to service, he need not abide by the bargain, unless the lord would build him a house: and he was, in such a case, not to lose the crop he had prepared. Ini, § 67. Thorpe, i. 146. Footnote 563: The transitory possessions of this life were often so described, in reference to the Almighty: “ða ǽhta ðe him God álǽned hæfð.” Cod. Dipl. No. 699. A lǽn for life, even though guarded by a very detailed bóc or charter, is distinctly called _beneficium_ by the grantee, Æðelbald of Wessex. Cod. Dipl. No. 1058. Footnote 564: Cod. Dipl. No. 328. Footnote 565: Thus Ealhfrið bishop of Winchester (871-877) making a grant for lives to duke Cúðred, properly calls it a lǽn: “Ealferð ⁊ ða higan habbað gelǽned,” etc. Cod. Dipl. No. 1062. They reserved ecclesiastical, but no secular dues. Footnote 566: Oswald’s grants generally contain a special clause to that effect: see Cod. Dipl. Nos. 494, 495, 506, 507, 509, 511, 529, 531, 538, 540, 552. Footnote 567: MS. Cott. Vitel. A. xv. fol. 2. “Ac ǽlcne man lyst, siððan he ǽnig cotlif on his hláfordes lǽne mid his fultume getimbred hæfð, ðæt he hine móte hwílum ðǽron gerestan, ⁊ huntigan, ⁊ fuglian ⁊ fiscan, ⁊ his on gehwylicwísan tó ðǽre lǽnan tilian, ǽgðer ge on sǽ ge on lande, oð oð ðone fyrst ðe he bócland ⁊ éce yrfe þurh his hláfordes miltse ge-earnige.” Whether land so put out was called earningland, I will not affirm; but at the close of a grant for three lives I find this memorandum: “Two of the lives have fallen in; then Eádwulf took it, and granted it to whomsover he would as earningland.” Cod. Dipl. No. 679. Cotlif seems in other passages to denote small estates not necessarily on lǽn. The Saxon Chronicle, an. 963, for example uses that term of the lands which Æðelwold gave to Ely, after purchasing them of the king. This it is clear he could not have done, had they been on any person’s lǽn. Were they not perhaps settlements of unlicensed squatters who had built their cottages on the king’s waste and deserted lands—the old Mark—in the isle of Ely and Cambridgeshire? But again the Chronicle, an. 1001, speaks of the hám or vill at Waltham, _and many other cotlifs_. ----- “But it pleaseth every man, when he hath built himself some cottage upon his lord’s lǽn, with his assistance, for a while to take up his rest thereon, and hunt, and fowl and fish, and in divers ways provide for himself upon the lǽn, both by sea and land, until the time when by his lord’s compassion he can earn a bócland and eternal inheritance.”