in the number of free tenancies[449]. [Personal subjection.] The courts made some attempts to utilise personal subjection as a distinctive feature of born villains. If it had been possible to follow out the principle, we should have been able to distinguish between villains proper and men of free blood holding in villainage. The attempt miscarried in practice, although the King's courts were acting in this case in conjunction with local custom and local juries. The reason of the failure is disclosed by manorial documents. Merchet, the most debasing incident of personal villainage, appears so widely spread in the Hundred Rolls that there can be no question, at least at the close of the thirteenth century, of treating it as a sure test of personal subjection. We cannot admit even for one moment that the whole peasant population of entire counties was descended from personal slaves, as the diffusion of merchet would lead us to suppose. The appearance of the distinction is quite as characteristic as its gradual collapse. The original idea underlying it was to connect villain status with personal slavery, and it failed because the incidents of personal slavery were confused with other facts which were quite independent of it and which were expanded over a very large area instead of a very restricted one. [Three tests of serfdom.] And now we have ready the several links of one chain. The three tests of serfdom applied by our documents are connected with each other by the very terms in which they are stated, and at the same time they present three consecutive stages of development. The notion of serfdom is originally confined to forms of personal subjection and to the possession of land under the bane of personal subjection: in this sense servitude is a narrow term, and the condition denoted by it is exceptional. In its second meaning it connects itself with rural labour and spreads over the whole class of peasants engaged in it. In its last and broadest sense it includes all the people and all the land not protected by the Common Law. We have no evidence as to the chronological landmarks between these several epochs, and it is clear that the passage from one to another was very gradual, and by no means implied the absolute disappearance of ancient terms. But it seems hardly doubtful that the movement was effected in the direction described; both the intrinsic evidence of the notions under discussion and their appearance in our documents point this way. [History of free peasantry.]