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Political states owing their rise to military means naturally followed the military pattern. The sharp separation between ruler or ruling group and subject people, based on conquest, was perpetuated in class distinction. Gentry and simple, lord and villein, were indeed combined in exploitation of earth's resources, but coöperation was in the background, mastery in the fore.
Instead of impeding enfranchisement, the laws, as well as the public feeling, encouraged it. If a villein who had fled from his lord remained a year and a day unclaimed upon the King's demesne lands, or in any privileged town, he became free. All doubtful cases were decided in favorem libertatis.
The lord is said to have a fee in the homage and services; and therefore no entry upon the land which does not disturb them injures him. /1/ It is the tenement which imposes the obligation of homage, /2/ and the same thing is true of villein and other feudal services. /3/
At the same court, too, William Hessland was amerced for appropriating the few trumpery chattels of Walter Cokstone, a villein belonging to the lord. Another wretched pair a man and his wife had deliberately cleared a crop of oats off an acre and a half of land, and stacked it in their own barn.
To be sure, the supreme lord had the power to raise even a villein to the rank of noble, after he had proved his superior elevation of mind by heroic achievements; but what superhuman exertions did not those achievements call for; what a concourse of fortuitous circumstances rarely occurring, so as to render almost illusory the hope of rising held out by the feudal theory!
I warrant that there are more sound ones than sorry, for he is quick at his work and a trifle dim in the eye. The lusty man next him with the red head I have not seen before. The four on this side are all workers, three of them in the service of the bailiff of Sir Baldwin Redvers, and the other, he with the sheepskin, is, as I hear, a villein from the midlands who hath run from his master.
The social changes on which we have already dwelt, the facilities given to alienation and the subdivision of lands, the transition of the serf into a copyholder and of the copyholder by redemption of his services into a freeholder, the rise of a new class of "farmers" as the lords ceased to till their demesne by means of bailiffs and adopted the practice of leasing it at a rent or "farm" to one of the customary tenants, the general increase of wealth which was telling on the social position even of those who still remained in villenage, undid more and more the earlier process which had degraded the free ceorl of the English Conquest into the villein of the Norman Conquest, and covered the land with a population of yeomen, some freeholders, some with services that every day became less weighty and already left them virtually free.
Quoth she, "I would have thee know that as for the booty thou hast not come at it; and, as for the handmaids, by Allah, they shall never be thy spoil. Have I not told thee that to lie is villein vile?" Quoth he, "The wise man is he who taketh warning by others."
"`Would she not like better to be a villein scullion-maid, than to be the daughter of my noble Lord of Kent?" "But Jews are not noble!" cried Margaret, gazing in bewilderment from Belasez to Doucebelle, as if she expected one of them to help her out of the puzzle. "Not in the world's estimate," answered Belasez. "There is One above the world."
"In what lacketh it?" "These people do not call each other varlets." "Nay, is that true?" "Yes; only those above them call them so." "Then must I try again. I will call him villein." "No-no; for he may be a freeman." "Ah so. Then peradventure I should call him goodman." "That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend, or brother." "Brother! to dirt like that?"
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