Unfortunately Domesday is silent with regard to mining matters, and consequently we can gather nothing as to the nature of the mining carried on in our Parish in Saxon times. There can be no doubt that mining of an elementary character was carried on, but of its extent and the number of those engaged in it, it would be rash to theorise. Knowing nothing therefore of the number of the population engaged in mining we can form no approximate estimate of the local population, but at any rate we may conclude that it cannot have been great. The bordars and slaves mentioned on the four manors only come to twenty-eight; on the largest of the manors, Metela or Methleigh, there were fifteen villeins; the number of villeins on the other three manors is not stated--simply the fact that there were villeins; but as Methleigh was about the size of the other three manors put together we may conclude these manors also possessed in all about fifteen villeins. This would give us a total of sixty-one villeins, bordars and serfs enumerated; if we multiply this number by five for the women and children of their respective families, it gives us a total agricultural population for the parishes of Breage and Germoe of three hundred and five, with eighteen teams of oxen, four cows, and ninety sheep. It is interesting to notice that the live stock were enumerated before the slaves, presumably because they were the more valuable. The houses or huts in which the Cornish villeins, bordars and serfs lived on the Saxon manors would be composed of clay, with a hole in the roof to let the smoke out; their inhabitants from constantly sitting in the smoke suffered greatly from diseases of the eyes; of sanitation there was none, and human life was exceedingly short. This condition of things practically continued in Cornwall to the end of the Tudor period as we gather from the picture of Cornish life given to us by Carew in his "Survey of Cornwall" written in the reign of Elizabeth. Compelled by law to live on the manor on which they were born and to give a great part of their labour free to their lord, the lives of the ancient inhabitants of Breage, judged at any rate by our standards, must have been dull and hard indeed. Each manor had its own court for the trial of cases which concerned only persons living on the manor; this court was under the presidency of the baron or thane, assisted by ten freemen. Where the freemen were not to be found, as in our Breage manors, cases were tried by the Court of the Hundred in which the manor was situated. The Court of the Hundred also tried suits in the case of the larger manors which involved people living in two or more different manors.[20]