This being so, we may expect to find some traces of the gradual spread of serfdom in the subdivisions of that comprehensive class called villainage. And, indeed, there are unmistakable signs of the fact that the flood was rising slowly and swamping the several groups of the peasantry which hitherto had been of very various conditions. The Domesday classification will have to be discussed by itself, but it may be noticed even now that its fundamental features are the distinction between serfs and villains, and the very limited number of these first. Judging by this, the bulk of the peasantry was not considered unfree. The inference is corroborated for the epoch of the early Norman kings by the laws of Henry I, in which the villain is still treated on the same footing as the ceorl of Saxon times, is deemed 'worthy of his were and of his wite,' and is called as a free man to the hundred court, although not a landlord, 'terrarum dominus.' The hundredors of later times kept up the tradition: degraded in many ways, they were still considered as representatives of a free population. Ancient demesne tenure is another proof of the same freedom in villainage; it is protected though base, and supposes independent rights on the part of the peasantry. The position of the group of socmen outside the ancient demesne points the same way: their tenure is originally nothing more and nothing less than a customary freehold or a free copyhold, if one may say so. The law of Kent is constructed on this very basis: it is the law of free ceorls subjected to a certain manorial authority which has not been able to strike very deep roots in this soil.