Roughly speaking, the two distinctions may have been gradually coming more and more to mean much the same thing. As a rule no doubt in King Ine’s time ceorlisc men were twy-hynde and gesithcund men twelve-hynde. [Sidenote: The unit of 10 hides of land.] The same class which, regarded from the point of view of the wergeld, possessed completeness of kindred and the twelve-hynde oath, when looked at from another point of view was gesithcund, _i.e._ more or less directly in the service of the King and belonging to the official and landed class. So that the value of the oath of both twelve-hynde and gesithcund men may have become easily associated with a territorial unit of ten hides of land. Now, the fact of the connection of the value of the oath with ten hides of land is pretty good proof that for practical purposes and in common usage the holding of ten hides was looked upon as in some way or other a typical unit of holding of the gesithcund or landed class. There is nothing new in this suggestion, but its lack of novelty does not detract from its value. And an examination from a tribal point of view of the isolated passages in the Dooms of Ine relating to this typical holding of ten hides may possibly throw further and useful light upon the position of the gesithcund class. While we speak of the gesithcund class as almost equivalent to the landed class it is obvious that it would be wrong to consider every gesithcundman as a landowner. Attention has already been called to the following clause: (51) If a gesithcundman owning land neglect the fyrd, let him pay 120_s._ and forfeit his land. One not owning land 60_s._, a _ceorlisc_ man 30_s._ as fyrd-wite. The gesithcundman _not_ possessing land may either be one who has forfeited his land or a cadet of the class not having yet attained to the position of landholding and yet being gesithcund by birth. Nor would it do to let modern notions of landownership intrude themselves so far into the question as to make us regard the gesithcund and landed class as a class of land-_owners_ in the modern sense. If the typical holding of ten hides be that of the gesithcundman, we may have to regard him rather as a gesith of the King put into possession of the ten hides by way of stewardship than as anything like the absolute owner of them. [Sidenote: Ten hides the unit for food rents to the chieftain or King.] The typical holding of ten hides may perhaps be usefully regarded, from a fiscal point of view, as a unit for purposes of revenue, at a time when that revenue under tribal custom consisted chiefly of food rents paid in kind for the King’s or the chieftain’s use. Clause 70 of the Dooms of Ine fixes in detail the food rent of ‘ten hides’ ‘to fostre’ or ‘on feorm.’ If the unit of ten hides were not the customary unit for these food rents on the Royal domains why should the details of the food rent of ten hides have been made the subject of an isolated clause like this?