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Updated: June 22, 2025
We shall have plenty to say about the guilds later the historical predecessors of the modern trades-unions. We here find the word guild recognized and spoken of in the law as early as 890. And if a ceorl throve, so that had fully five hides of his own land, church and kitchen, bell-house and burh-gate-seat, and special duty in the king's hall, then was he thenceforth of thegn-right worthy.
The sun had set before Harold gained the long and spacious abode of his father. All around it lay the roofs and huts of the great Earl's special tradesmen, for even his goldsmith was but his freed ceorl. The house itself stretched far from the Thames inland, with several low courts built only of timber, rugged and shapeless, but filled with bold men, then the great furniture of a noble's halls.
We will now resume the thread of our story. It was now the hour of eventide, and the time for "laying the board" drew near. From forest and field came in ceorl and theow, hanging up their weapons or agricultural implements around the lower end of the hall.
Already in Æthelberht's legislation we find characteristic fines inflicted for breach of the peace of householders of different ranks the ceorl, the eorl, and the king himself appearing as the most exalted among them.
And we tilled the land, we tended the herds, and we kept the house till the Earl came back." "Ye had moneys then, moneys of your own, ye ceorls!" said the Norman, avariciously. "How else could we buy our freedom? Every ceorl hath some hours to himself to employ to his profit, and can lay by for his own ends.
The Saxon Church invariably set the example of freeing the theowe and emancipating the ceorl, and taught that such acts were to the salvation of the soul.
The serious Margaret then rose quietly, and went to her brother, and said, in good Saxon: "Fie! if you behave thus, I shall call you NIDDERING!" At the threat of that word, the vilest in the language that word which the lowest ceorl would forfeit life rather than endure a threat applied to the Atheling of England, the descendant of Saxon heroes the three thegns drew close, and watched the boy, hoping to see that he would start to his feet with wrath and in shame.
The Norman knight or lawyer however saw little distinction between these classes; and the tendency of legislation under the Angevins was to blend all in a single class of serfs. While the pure "theow" or absolute slave disappeared therefore the ceorl or villein sank lower in the social scale.
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