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Updated: June 12, 2025
Said Bull: "How much worse do we than the chapmen by his debtor, and the lord of the manor by his villein?" Said Ralph: "Far worse, if ye did but know it, poor men!" Quoth Bull: "But I neither know it, nor can know it, nay, not when thou sayest it; for it is not so.
"I have in good sooth," Alleyne answered, and then as they journeyed on their way he told them the many things that had befallen him, his meeting with the villein, his sight of the king, his coming upon his brother, with all the tale of the black welcome and of the fair damsel.
"Was it ever heard before," cried Sire Mallet de Graville, "that a Norman knight was expected to walk, and to walk against a foe too! Call hither the villein, that is, the captain." But Sexwolf himself here appeared, and to him De Graville addressed his indignant remonstrance.
Men died, and women and children, the baron of the castle, the franklin on the farm, the monk in the abbey and the villein in his wattle-and-daub cottage. All breathed the same polluted reek and all died the same death of corruption. Of those who were stricken none recovered, and the illness was ever the same gross boils, raving, and the black blotches which gave its name to the disease.
"In what lacketh it?" "These people do not call each other varlets." "Nay, is that true?" "Yes; only those above them call them so." "Then must I try again. I will call him villein." "No-no; for he may be a freeman." "Ah so. Then peradventure I should call him goodman." "That would answer, your grace, but it would be still better if you said friend, or brother." "Brother! to dirt like that?"
Now, he had sunk into the mere "villein," bound to follow his lord to the field, to give him his personal service, and to look to him alone for justice. The Northmen were a perpetual menace and scourge to England and Scotland. There never could be any feeling of permanent security while that hostile flood was always ready to press in through an unguarded spot on the coast.
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.
Disputes were settled by a reference to this roll or on oral evidence of the custom at issue, but a social arrangement which was eminently characteristic of the English spirit of compromise generally secured a fair adjustment of the claims of villein and lord.
Howbeit this day I seek them out " "Seek them 'tis death!" "Death let it be, 'tis none so fearful!" "They will slay thee out of hand a wild rabblement, lawless and disordered!" "So would I bring order among them, Giles. And thou shalt aid me." "I aid thee? How would'st have me company with such vile carrion? Not I, forsooth. I am a soldier, free-born, and no serf like Walkyn or villein like Roger.
But in my childhood, there was a fierce outbreak of rebellion among the villeins, needing bloody example to check, and the memories of wrath between lord and villein must sleep before we can do justice between them, as please St. Peter, and by Lanfranc's aid, we hope to do. Meanwhile, one great portion of our villeinage in our larger towns we have much mitigated.
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