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Green, for instance, the historian of the English people, seems to have had no clear conception of many of those characteristics of ordinary rural life which Mr. Seebohm has made familiar. Vinogradoff, Paul: Villainage in England. Pollock, Sir Frederick, and Maitland, F. W.: History of English Law, Vol. 1.
"There shall be never any bond slaverie, villainage, or captivitie amongst us, unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel doth morally require."
These free renting farmers, along with the smaller freeholders, made up the "yeomen" of England. The Decay of Serfdom.* It is in the changes discussed in the last two paragraphs that is to be found the key to the disappearance of serfdom in England. Men had been freed from villainage in individual cases by various means.
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