This observation leads us to several others which are not devoid of importance. As soon as the notion arose that personal servitude was implied by the payment of merchet,--as soon as such a notion got sanctioned by legal theory, the fine was extended in practice to cases where it did not apply originally. We have direct testimony to the effect that feudal lords introduced it on their lands in places where it had never been paid[299], and one cannot help thinking that such administrative acts as the survey of 1279-1280, the survey represented by the Hundred Rolls, materially helped such encroachments. The juries made their presentments in respect of large masses of peasantry, under the preponderating influence of the gentry and without much chance for the verification of particular instances. The description was not false as a whole, but it was apt to throw different things into the same mould, and to do it in the interest of landed proprietors. Again, the variety of conditions in which we come across the merchet, leads us to suppose that this term was extended through the medium of legal theory to payments which differed from each other in their very essence: the commutation of the 'jus primae noctis,' the compensation paid to the lord for the loss of his bondwoman leaving the manor, and the fine for marriage to be levied by the township or the hundred, were all thrown together. Last, but not least, the vague application of this most definite of social tests corroborates what has been already inferred from terminology, namely, that the chief stress was laid in all these relations, not on legal, but on economic distinctions. The stratification of the class and the determination of the lord's rights both show traits of legal status, but these traits lose in importance in comparison with other features that have no legal meaning, or else they spread over groups and relations which come from different quarters and get bound up together only through economic conditions. [Servile customs.]