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Updated: June 12, 2025
Also, in spite of all opposition, labor did make good its claim to participate more or less fully in the ownership of the property it cultivated, for while the holding of the ancient villein grew to be well recognized in the royal courts as a copyhold estate, villeinage itself disappeared.
After Jan's birth Bockel married the woman and bought her her freedom from the villein status that was hers by heredity. Jan was taught the tailoring handicraft at Leyden, but seems to have received little schooling. His natural abilities, however, were considerable, and he eagerly devoured the religious and propagandist literature of the time.
After he saw that slavery would inevitably be abolished, he drew up at length a plan of emancipation according to which the condition of the slave was to be commuted into that of the old English villein he was to be made an appendage to the soil instead of the "chattel personal" of the master, the whip was to be partially abolished, a modicum of wages was to be allowed the slave, and so on.
It was now established that every tenant-in-chief should do homage to the king; that every superior tenant should do homage to his lord; that every villein should be the bondman of the free; and that every slave should, without any property however limited and insecure, be the absolute chattel of some master. The whole system was connected with military service. This was the feudal system.
In their eyes it seemed as though their tenants were taking an unfair advantage of the disorganisation of the national life. The lord on whose manor the tenant had heretofore dwelt had preferential claim to his labour, and could threaten with imprisonment every refractory villein.
And above all, the lowest serf ever had the great hope both of freedom and of promotion; but the beast of the field was holier in the eyes of the Norman, than the wretched villein . We have likened the Norman to the Spartan, and, most of all, he was like him in his scorn of the helot.
Beyond the confines of this great and goodly camp the lists had been formed, and here from earliest dawn a great concourse had been gathering; villein and vassal, serf and freedman from town and village: noble lords and ladies fair from castle hall and perfumed bower, all were here, for to-day a witch was to die to-day, from her tortured flesh the flame was to drive forth and exorcize, once and for all, the demon who possessed her, by whose vile aid she wrought her charms and spells.
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!"
The luxury of the castle-hall, the splendour and pomp of chivalry, the cost of campaigns drained the purses of knight and baron, and the sale of freedom to a serf or exemption from services to a villein afforded an easy and tempting mode of refilling them. In this process even kings took part.
And a villein shall be amerced after the same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall be assessed but by the oath of honest men in the neighbourhood. Earls and barons shall not be amerced but by their peers, and after the degree of the offence.
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