But property had not as yet reached that stage of absolutely personal possession which the social philosophy of a later time falsely regarded as its earliest state.

The woodland and pasture-land of an English village were still undivided, and every free villager had the right of turning into it his cattle or swine.

The meadow-land lay in like manner open and undivided from hay-harvest to spring.

It was only when grass began to grow afresh that the common meadow was fenced off into grass-fields, one for each household in the village; and when hay-harvest was over fence and division were at an end again.

The plough-land alone was permanently allotted in equal shares both of corn-land and fallow-land to the families of the freemen, though even the plough-land was; subject to fresh division as the number of claimants grew greater or less.
[Sidenote: Laet and Slave] It was this sharing in the common land which marked off the freeman or ceorl from the unfree man or laet, the tiller of land which another owned.
As the ceorl was the descendant of settlers who, whether from their earlier arrival or from kinship with the original settlers of the village, had been admitted to a share in its land and its corporate life, so the laet was a descendant of later comers to whom such a share was denied, or in some cases perhaps of earlier dwellers from whom the land had been wrested by force of arms.