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the continuous importance in Russian history of shiftingpopulation and migration. The hundred years between1550 and 1650 was the century par excellence of runawaypeasants, sometimes from one landowner to another,more often from any landowner whomsoever, 'to seekland' in the new frontier, to take their chance in 'thewild grounds,' or to swell the class of 'vagrants' whichso much hampered and at times alarmed the government.This also was the century of the new serfdom.Serfdom, of much the same kind as in medievalEurope, had been long current in the Russian lands, butit had not expanded and hardened into the form that itlater took. For many purposes, in Muscovy of thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries, comparison shouldbe made with Anglo-Saxon rather than with Norman orPlantagenet England. Whatever feudal similarities theremay be (see p. 95), there was nothing even in theory of'no land without a lord.' Population was very thin andscattered; the family was the chief unit; the nucleatedvillage and the large open fields were exceptions (cf.p. 25). The peasants, as much hunters, foresters,and craftsmen as farmers, had been both in law and ineconomic fact divided into a number of classes withdiffering obligations and rights, ranging from the unfreeslaves, the full property of their masters and paying nodues to the state, to the independent 'ownlanders' ofNovgorod.The line between freedom and unfreedom was waveringand blurred, but one usually distinguishing mark ofthe free was a burden, the obligation to pay dues insome form to the state. 'The black lands' were thosecommunities that owed such dues direct; those whowere later called 'black ploughlandmen' were the free,taxpaying peasants, usually grouped for fiscal and administrativepurposes in cantons of twenty or morehamlets or villages, which were collectively responsiblefor the detailed assessment of taxation and services.Other peasants lived on the lands of ecclesiastical andlay landowners on very various contractual terms astenants, 'commended men,' metayers, serfs, 'referredslaves' (a class of temporary slaves), or as full slaves.149