Yet not in all cases can we draw so favourable a picture of the condition of an Anglosaxon town: in many of them, the unfree dwelt by the side of the freemen in their gylds, under the presidency of their lord’s geréfa. And where the number of the unfree was greatly preponderant, and the power of the lord proportionally increased, we cannot but believe that the freemen themselves were too often deprived of their most cherished privileges. Without going quite so far as the custom in some mediæval towns, where the air itself was emphatically said to be loaded with serfage,—where slavery was epidemic[804],—it is but too evident that in many places, the free settlers, while they retained their wergyld and perhaps other personal rights, must yet have been subject like their neighbours to servile dues and works, and compelled to attend the lord’s court. Let us only imagine a case which was probably not uncommon; where the lord, with his own numerous unfree dependents, occupied the post of the king’s burggeréfa, the bishop’s or abbot’s _advocatus_, and forced himself as their geréfa upon the free. What refuge could there be for these, if he determined to assimilate his various jurisdictions, and subject all alike to the convenient machinery of a centralized authority? They might in vain declare, as did the Northumbrians of old, that “free by birth and educated as freemen, they scorned to submit to the tyranny of any duke,” or count or geréfa,—but what remedy had they, when once the defence of the mutual guarantee was removed? Theoretically of course they were _cyre-lif_, that is, they could go away and choose a lord elsewhere: but we may fairly doubt whether they could practically do this. New connexions are not easily formed in a state which enjoys but little means of intercommunication: what would be sacrificed now without regret, assumes a very disproportionate importance at a period when accumulation is slow, and acquisition difficult: nor could the expatriated chapman securely remove his valuables from one place to another; or even legally withdraw from the district where he felt himself aggrieved, without the consent of the very officer from whose unjust exactions he desired to escape. Under such circumstances of difficulty, it is to be supposed that, like the prædial freemen on the country estates, they were reduced to make the best bargain that they could; in other words, that they ultimately submitted to the customs of the place. ----- Footnote 804: “Die Luft macht eigen.” -----