Another difficulty arises from the fact that the law of this period was fashioned by kings of French origin and lawyers of Norman training. What share is to be assigned to their formal influence? and what share comes from that old stock of ideas and facts which they could not or would not destroy? We may hesitate as to details in this respect. It is possible that the famous paragraph of the so-called Laws of William the Conqueror, prescribing in general terms that peasants ought not to be taken from the land or subjected to exactions[247], is an insertion of the Norman period, although the great majority of these Laws are Saxon gleanings. It is likely that the notion of _wainage_ was worked out under the influence of Norman ideas; the name seems to show it, and perhaps yet more the fact that the plough was specially privileged in the duchy. It is to be assumed that the king, not because he was a Norman but because he was a king, was interested in the welfare of subjects on whose back the whole structure of his realm was resting. But the influence of the strangers went broadly against the peasantry, and it has been repeatedly shown that Norman lawyers were prompted by anything but a mild spirit towards them. The _Dialogus de Scaccario_ is very instructive on this point, because it was written by a royal officer who was likely to be more impartial than the feudatories or any one who wrote in their interest would be, and yet it makes out that villains are mere chattels of their lord, and treats them throughout with the greatest contempt. And so, speaking generally, it is to the times before the Conquest that the stock of liberty and legal independence inherent in villainage must be traced, even if we draw inferences merely on the strength of the material found on this side of the Conquest. And when we come to Saxon evidence, we shall see how intimately the condition of the ceorl connects itself with the state of the villain along the main lines and in detail. [Ancient demesne.]