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Updated: July 12, 2025
They could commute the labor due to their owner by a fixed sum of money, after annual payment of which, the villein worked for himself. His master, therefore, was not his absolute proprietor. The chattel had a beneficial interest in a portion of his own flesh and blood. The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.
The two candidates for the borough in the True Blue interest, Audley Egerton and Randal Leslie; and Levy, chief among the barons to whom modern society grants a seignorie of pillage, which, had a baron of old ever ventured to arrogate, burgess and citizen, socman and bocman, villein and churl, would have burned him alive in his castle; the Duke di Serrano, still fondly clinging to his title of Doctor and pet name of Riccabocca; Jemima, not yet with the airs of a duchess, but robed in very thick silks, as the chrysalis state of a duchess; Violante, too, was there, sadly against her will, and shrinking as much as possible into the retirement of her own chamber.
Thou spokest of Montagu; he seems to have been mighty cold to his brother's wrongs, ever at the court, ever sleek with Villein and Woodville." "But the better to watch thy interests, I so counselled him." "A priest's counsel! Hate frankly or love freely is a knight's and soldier's motto. A murrain on all doubledealing!"
As a security against rebellion, a new oath of fealty was required from every man, whether earl or villein, fugitives and outlaws were to be more sharply sought after, and felons punished with harsher cruelty.
Rolf smiled, as if pleased with a compliment which simpler men might have deemed, at the best, equivocal, and replied: "It is true, my liege; and gramercy, the air of England sharpens the scent; for in this villein and motley country, made up of all races, Saxon and Fin, Dane and Fleming, Pict and Walloon, it is not as with us, where the brave man and the pure descent are held chief in honour: here, gold and land are, in truth, name and lordship; even their popular name for their national assembly of the Witan is, 'The Wealthy. He who is but a ceorl to-day, let him be rich, and he may be earl to-morrow, marry in king's blood, and rule armies under a gonfanon statelier than a king's; while he whose fathers were ealdermen and princes, if, by force or by fraud, by waste or by largess, he become poor, falls at once into contempt, and out of his state, sinks into a class they call 'six-hundred men, in their barbarous tongue, and his children will probably sink still lower, into ceorls.
Rolf smiled, as if pleased with a compliment which simpler men might have deemed, at the best, equivocal, and replied: "It is true, my liege; and gramercy, the air of England sharpens the scent; for in this villein and motley country, made up of all races, Saxon and Fin, Dane and Fleming, Pict and Walloon, it is not as with us, where the brave man and the pure descent are held chief in honour: here, gold and land are, in truth, name and lordship; even their popular name for their national assembly of the Witan is, 'The Wealthy. He who is but a ceorl to-day, let him be rich, and he may be earl to-morrow, marry in king's blood, and rule armies under a gonfanon statelier than a king's; while he whose fathers were ealdermen and princes, if, by force or by fraud, by waste or by largess, he become poor, falls at once into contempt, and out of his state, sinks into a class they call 'six-hundred men, in their barbarous tongue, and his children will probably sink still lower, into ceorls.
H. 8. fo. 1. affirmeth plainly, that if a man beat an out-law, a traitor, a Pagan, his villein, or his wife, it is dispunishable, because by the Law Common these persons can haue no action: God send Gentle women better sport, or better companie. See for this the new Nat. bre. fo. 80 f. & fo. 23S f.
All the then oppressed classes of society the small peasant, half villein, half free-man; the landless journeyman and town-proletarian; the beggar by the wayside; the small master, crushed by usury or tyrannized over by his wealthier colleague in the guild, or by the town-patriciate; even the impoverished knight, or the soldier of fortune defrauded of his pay; in short, all with whom times were bad, found consolation for their wants and troubles, and at the same time an incentive to action, in the notion of a Divine Justice which should restore all things, and the advent of which was approaching.
The feudal spirit still exists in the hearts of the men who were born in these remote dales and towering hills, and the landlord of the little inn was as proud of the antiquity of the Heron family, and as sorry for its broken fortune as any villein of the middle ages could have been for the misfortunes of his feudal baron. "Heron Hall used to be a fine place at one time, sir.
The Norman knight or lawyer however saw little distinction between these classes; and the tendency of legislation under the Angevins was to blend all in a single class of serfs. While the pure "theow" or absolute slave disappeared therefore the ceorl or villein sank lower in the social scale.
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