The material hitherto collected and discussed enables us to distinguish different layers in its formation. To begin with, the influence of lawyers must be taken into account. This is at once to be seen in the treatment of distinctions and divisions. The Common Law, as it was forming itself in the King's Court, certainly went far to smoothe down the peculiarities of local custom. Even when such peculiarities were legally recognised, as in the case of ancient demesne, the control and still more the example of the Common Law Courts was making for simplification and reducing them more or less to a generally accepted standard. The influence of the lawyers was exactly similar in regard to subdivisions on the vertical plane (if I may use the expression): for these varieties of dependence get fused into general servitude, and in this way classes widely different in their historical development are brought together under the same name. The other side of this process of simplification is shown where legal theory hardens and deepens the divisions it acknowledges. In this way the chasm between liberty and servitude increases as the notion of servitude gets broader. In order to get sharp boundaries and clear definitions to go by, the lawyers are actually driven to drop such traits of legal relations as are difficult to manage with precision, however great their material importance, and to give their whole attention to facts capable of being treated clearly. This tendency may account for the ultimate victory of the quantitative test of servitude over the qualitative one, or to put it more plainly, of the test of certainty of services over the discussion of kind of services. Altogether the tendency towards an artificial crystallisation of the law cannot be overlooked. [Roman law, Norman law, and royal jurisdiction.]