And not only socmen have to bear such impositions: we find them constantly in all shapes and gradations in connection with free tenantry. The small freeholder often takes part in rural work[425], sometimes he has to act as a kind of overseer[426], and in any case this base labour would not degrade him from his position[427]. Already in Bracton's day the learned thought that the term 'socage' was etymologically connected with the duty of ploughing:--a curious proof both of the rapidity with which past history had become unintelligible, and of the perfect compatibility of socage with labour services. Merchet, heriot, and tallage occur even more often[428]. All such exactions testify to the fact that the conceptions of feudal law as to the servile character of particular services and payments were in a great measure artificial. Tallage, even arbitrary tallage, was but a tax after all, and did not detract from personal freedom or free tenure in this sense. Then heriot often occurs among free people in the old Saxon form of a surrender of horse and arms as well as in that of the best ox[429]. Merchet is especially interesting as illustrating the fusion of different duties into one. It is the base payment _par excellence_, and often used in manorial documents as a means to draw the line between free and unfree men[430]. Nevertheless free tenants are very often found to pay it[431]. In most cases they have only to fine in the case when their daughters leave the manor, and this, of course, has nothing degrading in it: the payment is made because the lord loses all claim as to the progeny of the woman who has left his dominion. But there is evidence besides to show that free tenants had often to pay in such a case to the hundred, and the lords had not always succeeded in dispossessing the hundred[432]. Such a fine probably developed out of a payment to the tribe or to a territorial community in the case when a woman severed herself from it. It had nothing servile in its origin. And still, if the documents had not casually mentioned these instances, we should have been left without direct evidence as to a difference of origin in regard to merchet or gersum. Is it not fair to ask, whether the merchet of the villains themselves may not in some instances have come from a customary recompense paid originally to the community of the township into the rights of which the lord has entered? However this may be, one fact can certainly not be disputed: men entirely free in status and tenure were sometimes subjected to an exaction which both public opinion and legal theory considered as a badge of servitude. [Feudal oppression in the direction of servitude.]