Anglo-Saxon Institutions. 449-1066 13
difference between the freeman and the slave. Slavery
and freedom in modern times are usually so sharply sepa-
rated that a possibility of confusing them seems absurd.
But in Anglo-Saxon times, conditions were very different.
To be sure, many were slaves because born so, but the
class was constantly being recruited in other ways: foes
taken in battle, men in every way the equals of the con-
querors, and of Teutonic as well as Celtic blood, became
slaves; members of a community who may have long lived
respected by their neighbours might, owing to a variety
of misfortunes, be obliged to bow their heads in the evil
time and part more or less completely with their freedom.
It was impossible with their loose ways of thinking to
allow the legal status of a man to be wholly uninfluenced
by his personality. "We may well doubt whether this
principle—'The slave is a thing, not a person'—can be
fully understood by a grossly barbarous age. It implies
the idea of a person, and in the world of sense we find not
persons, but men."1 With this caution in mind, the
Anglo-Saxon population may be divided as follows: at the
bottom of society were the slaves or serfs, men lacking
freedom, but not necessarily lacking all rights; next in
order came the non-noble freemen, the ceorls; and above
them the eorls or warriors, the main body of whom was
perhaps not much above the grade of the later gentry,
while the afhelings or princely kindreds were a true no-
bility. The status of this whole last class was based on
blood and not on office or service. But from the earliest
times are found traces of a nobility by service, and, with
the development of the kingdoms, the eorls declined and
the new nobility, the ihegns, gained in importance. This
•word originally denoted service, and the early thegns,
first metitioned in the late seventh and early eighth cen-
turies, were king's followers. After the eighth century
they became a landed aristocracy of about the grade of
the later country gentlemen, though some notion of
1 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 27.