Ceorl

Ceorl, a word which occurs frequently in the laws before the Norman Conquest under somewhat varying senses, but substantially meaning an ordinary freeman not of noble birth. His position gradually sank in social status until it hardly differed from that of the serf, save that the ceorl had the right of choosing his own master in accordance with the law of Athelstan, which required every landless man to find himself a lord. He still remained 'law-worthy,' and paid his wer-gild of two hundred shillings; but part of his freedom had disappeared, and ultimately his condition developed into the complete rillenance characteristic of feudalism. On the other hand, ceorls who possessed land often contrived to force their way into a higher social class, that of the thegns, a kind of nobility of service who may be roughly put as equivalent to the knavts of the period after the Conquest. A ceorl with 5 hides (600 acres) of land was 'thegn-worthy.' The name ceorl does not occur in Domesday—the very degradation of the meaning of the word churl in modern usage is but a part of the historical degradation of the social class which it denoted.