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Then the wild man mocked him, and told his own tale. He was in that estate which Achilles, among the ghosts, preferred to all the kingship of the dead outworn. He was hind and hireling to a villein, and he had lost one of the villein's oxen. For that he dared not go into the town, where a prison awaited him.
But the holy Sister, as I had heard, never mounted a horse in her many wanderings, she being a villein's daughter, but was carried in a litter, or fared in a chariot; nor did she go in company with armed men, for who would dare to lay hands on her? Moreover, the voice that I had heard was that of a very young girl, and the holy Sister Colette was now entered into the vale of years.
Beneficium was the legal name of an estate held by a feudal tenure. See Spelman's Glossary. Waynage was a villein's plough-tackle and carts.
It was injudicious to press for the strict performance of villein services, lest the villein should turn recalcitrant and leave his holding. The lord preferred to commute his villein's service into a small payment.
The wills are of all kinds; there are even villeins' wills, though in theory the villein's possessions were his lord's, and there are wills of kings and queens, lords and ladies, bishops and parsons and lawyers and shopkeepers. Such a living picture do men's wills give us of their daily lives. These, then, are the three sources from which the life and times of Thomas Paycocke may be drawn.
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