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Updated: July 26, 2025
A much greater portion of their time than was the case with the villeins was at the disposal of their master, nor indeed, owing to the lesser extent of their property, did they need so much opportunity for working their own land. These had almost exclusively the live stock to look after, being engaged as foresters, shepherds, swineherds, and servants of the household.
For when ye had left us, this evil man gathered around him all outlaws, villeins, and masterless men, until they were come to such a force that they slew and scattered the king's men who went against them. Then, coming forth from the woods, they laid siege to thy castle, and for two days they girt us in and shot hard against us, with such numbers as were a marvel to see.
Besides these were the villeins or villani, or natives, as they were called. The villeins were tillers of the soil, who held land under the lord, and who, besides paying a small money ground rent, were obliged to perform certain arduous services to the lord, such as to plough the lord's land for so many days in the year, to carry his corn in the harvest, to provide a cart on occasion, &c.
By a degradation in the condition of the villani, and the elevation of that of the servi, the two classes were brought gradually nearer together; till at last the military oppression of the Normans, thrusting down all degrees of tenants and servants into one common slavery, or at least into strict dependence, one name was adopted for both of them as a generic term, that of villeins regardant.
I doubt me much, lady, that there is little hope of winning back your lands, whatever side may be uppermost, yet there be true hearts among our villeins, who say they will never pay dues to any save their lord's daughter." "Then I am landless and homeless," sighed Grisell.
The second note, then, of the Dark Ages is the gradual transition of Christian society from a number of slave-owning, rich, landed proprietors, taxed and administered by a regular government, to a society of fighting nobles and their descendants, organized upon a basis of independence and in a hierarchy of lord and overlord, and supported no longer by slaves in the villages, but by half-free serfs or "villeins."
But saw you not, as we rode along, the lowering brows? and heard you not the angry murmurs? The villeins are many, and their hate is strong." "Strong is the roan I bestride," said the Duke; "but a bold rider curbs it with the steel of the bit, and guides it with the goad of the heel."
Good it were if we fell on all who are not guildsmen or men of free land, if we fell on soccage tenants and others, and brought both the law and the strong hand on them, and made them all villeins in deed as they are now in name; for now these rascals make more than their bellies need of bread, and their backs of homespun, and the overplus they keep to themselves; and we are more worthy of it than they.
Forsooth Ralph saw fire after fire break out to the westward; and the brother said: "And if we stood over the high altar and looked east, ye would see more of such fires and many more; and all these bales are piled up and lighted by vassals and villeins of my lord Abbot: now to-night they are but mere Midsummer bale-fires; but doubt ye not that if there came war into the land each one of these bales would mean at least a half-score of stout men, archers and men-at-arms, all ready to serve their lord at all adventure.
Freedmen from the rural districts, who, unable to gain a livelihood in the country, had come to reside in the cities, where they could more easily subsist. Thus, besides the feudal lords and the class of villeins, there was formed everywhere a third class, that of arts and trades.
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