If one drive off a gesithcundman, let him be driven forth from the homestead (_botl_), not the _setene_. If he was evicted he was to be driven from the _botl_ or homestead, not the _setene_. What can the _setene_ have been? [Sidenote: Were the stock and crops always his own?] The land granted or intrusted to the gesithcundman for the performance of corresponding duties is not likely to have been mere waste. Part of it might surely already be ‘geset land,’ let to tenants of yardlands. On the rest of it still held in demesne there would probably be some herds of cattle. In these early days the cattle and corn on the land were far more valuable than the mere land itself. If, therefore, a fixed food rent was payable to the King, may it not be inferred that sometimes the typical holding of ten hides included the stock let with it, just as, according to the ‘Rectitudines,’ the yardland did? Following strictly the analogy, the original stock on the land and in the hands of the tenants would be the ‘setene’ of the gesithcundman, theoretically, like the land itself, belonging, not to him, but to his lord? It might have been sometimes so. But at the same time there might be other cases in which the possession of cattle may have led to the tenure. The ceorl or the wealh who had risen to having five hides may have brought the cattle or setene with him. And to evict him from his own cattle and crops as well as from the _botl_ might be unjust. The text as it stands seems to mean that the gesithcundman is not to be evicted _from_ the _setene_, and the clause seems to be intended to protect his rights and to prevent his being evicted from his own stock and crops on the land. The clause is not clear, but it adds to the sense that in the case of the gesithcundman we are not dealing with a landowner who can do what he likes with his own, any more than in the case of the ceorlisc gafol-geldas we are dealing with a class of peasant proprietors. [Sidenote: Position of the two classes in Ine’s time.] Difficult as it may be to come to a clear understanding of some of these isolated passages in the Dooms of Ine, they may at least have saved us from the pitfall of a fatal anachronism. Their difficulties, forcing us to think, may in some degree have helped us to realise the point of view from which the two classes--gesithcund and ceorlisc--were regarded in early Wessex legislation. [Sidenote: The gesithcund class the landed class. The ceorlisc class the tenant class paying gafol to the landed class.]