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And these expressions became, in the eyes of the English lawyers, identical with the Irish race and the Irish nature; so that at all times, peace or war, even when the Irish fought in the English ranks, aiding the Plantagenets in their furious contests with the Scotch or the French, they were still "Irish enemies;" "aliens" unworthy human rights, villeins in whose veins no noble blood could flow, with the exception of five families.
As, however, this arrangement excluded villeins and strangers, the franchise always belonged to a particular body in every town a body undoubtedly possessed of property, for they bore the charges of their members, and on them were assessed the subsidies and taxes voted by Parliament. But when villeinage ceased, various and opposite courses seemed to have been pursued in different boroughs.
Others dealt with disorders which had grown up from the mutual jealousy of Church and lay courts, and the difficulties thus thrown in the way of administering laws which were not disputed; rules were made for the securities to be taken from excommunicated persons; for the giving up to the king of forfeited goods of felons deposited in churches or churchyards; and forbidding the ordination of villeins without their lord's consent, a provision which possibly was intended to prevent the withdrawal of an unlimited number of people from secular jurisdiction.
The scarcity of hands produced by the terrible mortality made it difficult for villeins to perform the services due for their lands, and only a temporary abandonment of half the rent by the landowners induced the farmers of their demesnes to refrain from the abandonment of their farms. For a time cultivation became impossible.
But these were of the princes of the land. To the people, the villeins, the common rank and file, does no interest attach? Did they waste and pine, anæmic, in thin, strange, unwonted air? Or sit at the table of the scornful and learn, with Dante, how salt was alien bread? It is of one of those faithful commons I would speak, narrating only ``the short and simple annals of the poor.
What still seems incredible, and is nevertheless attested by every chronicle of the time, is that this horde of old folks and children, of women and men, were at once amenable to discipline; and yet they belonged to every class of society, for there were among them knights and ladies of high degree; but divine love was so powerful that it annihilated distinctions and abolished caste; the nobles harnessed themselves with the villeins to drag the trucks, piously fulfilling their task as beasts of burthen; patrician dames helped the peasant women to stir the mortar, and to cook the food; all lived together in an undreamed surrender of prejudice; all were alike ready to be mere labourers, machines, loins and arms, and to toil without a murmur under the orders of the architects who had come out of the cloister to direct the work.
For the laws of Norman England mainly applied to land-owners, and were made by the barons, the only people that had property; there was but a small class in those early days between the land-owners and actual serfs, villeins, who were practically attached to the soil, in a condition almost of servitude; they did service, were not paid wages, and couldn't leave the place where they were born and both these are tests of slavery.
Five brothers named Gritlof and two other brothers named Primrose, being nativi, i.e., villeins born, and so the property of the lord, had decamped whither none could tell; the court solemnly adjudicated upon the case, and decreed that the seven runaways should be attached per corpora, whatever that may mean.
At the head of forty thousand horse he published proclamations, revoking the charters of manumission which he had granted, commanding the villeins to perform their usual services, and prohibiting illegal assemblies and associations.
They had none of the natural attributes of humanity, their life and death were in the master's hands, they had no claim to a fraction of their own labor or its fruits, they had no marriage, except under condition of the infamous 'jus primoe noctis'. The villagers, or villeins, were the second class and less forlorn.
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