Not that he need pay rent, or perform other services in return for the land. The land is his land; he has not obtained it from his lord; on the contrary he has carried it to his lord. Mere commendation is therefore distinguished by a score of entries from a relation that involves the payment of _consuetudines_. Doubtless however the lord obtains 'a valuable consideration' for all that he gives. Part of this will probably lie without the legal sphere. He has a sworn retainer who will fight whenever he is told to fight. But even the law allows the man to go great lengths in his lord's defence[273]. In a rough age happy is the lord who has many sworn to defend him. When at a later time we see that the claimant of land must offer proof 'by the body of a certain free man of his,' we are taught that the lords have relied upon the testimony and the strong right arms of their vassals. That in all cases the lord got more than this we can not say, though perhaps commendation carried with it the right to the heriot, the horse and armour of the dead man[274]. The relation is often put before us as temporary. Numerous are the persons who 'can seek lords where they choose' or who can 'go with their land wherever they please.' How large a liberty these phrases accord to lord and man it were hard to tell. We can not believe that either party to the contract could dissolve it just at the moment when the other had some need to enforce it; but still at other times the man might dissolve it, and we may suppose that the lord could do so too. But the connexion might be of a more permanent kind. Perhaps in most cases in which we are told that a man can not withdraw his land from his lord the bond between them is regarded as something other than commendation--there is commendation and something more. But this is no universal truth. You might be the lord's man 'merely by commendation' and yet be unable to sell your land without the lord's leave[275]. At any rate, in one way and another 'the commendation' is considered as capable of binding the land. The commended man will be spoken of as holding the land under (_sub_) his lord, if not of (_de_) his lord[276]. In many cases if he sells the land 'the commendation will remain to his lord'--by which is meant, not that the vendor will continue to be the man of that lord (for the purposes of the Domesday Inquest this would be a matter of indifference) but that the lord's rights over the land are not destroyed. The purchaser comes to the land and finds the commendation inhering in it[277].