Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
The Sire de Graville involuntarily drew off from the Saxon's side, as if made suddenly aware that he had grossly demeaned himself in such unwitting familiarity with a ceorl, and a ceorl's son; and he said, with a much more careless accent and lofty port than before: "Good man, thou wert a ceorl, and now thou leadest Earl Harold's men to the war! How is this? I do not quite comprehend it."
The Normans saw them only in the former light, and turned aside to conceal their laughter; the Saxon felt them in the latter and truer sense, and stood rebuked. That great king, whom he now recognised, with all those drawn swords at his back, could not do him hurt; that king had not the heart to hurt him. The ceorl sprang from the gate, and opened it, bending low.
Ye all know that this was the strongest violation of Saxon right; ye know that the meanest ceorl hath the proverb on his lip, 'Every man's house is his castle. One of the townsmen acting on this belief, which I have yet to learn was a false one, expelled from his threshold a retainer of the French Earl's.
In the same division of the hall were found the bulk and true popular part of the meeting popular indeed as representing not the people, but the things the people most prized-valour and wealth; the thegn landowners, called in the old deeds the "Ministers:" they sate with swords by their side, all of varying birth, fortune, and connection, whether with king, earl, or ceorl.
The Sire de Graville involuntarily drew off from the Saxon's side, as if made suddenly aware that he had grossly demeaned himself in such unwitting familiarity with a ceorl, and a ceorl's son; and he said, with a much more careless accent and lofty port than before: "Good man, thou wert a ceorl, and now thou leadest Earl Harold's men to the war! How is this? I do not quite comprehend it."
The pure slave class had never been numerous, and it had been reduced by the efforts of the Church, perhaps by the general convulsion of the Danish wars. But these wars had often driven the ceorl or freeman of the township to "commend" himself to a thegn who pledged him his protection in consideration of payment in a rendering of labour.
"My son," said the prelate kindly, "these are the things of childhood childhood ends sooner with princes than with common men. Leave thy lure and thy toys, and welcome these noble thegns, and address them, so please you, in our own Saxon tongue." "Saxon tongue! language of villeins! not I. Little do I know of it, save to scold a ceorl or a nurse.
Wibba, the son of Crida, founder of the monarchy, being placed on the throne, by Ethelbert, King of Kent, governed his paternal dominions by a precarious authority, and after his death, Ceorl, his kinsman, was, by the influence of the Kentish monarch, preferred to his son Penda, whose turbulent character appeared dangerous to that prince.
Thou deemest thyself wiser than we are; we wretched hags, whom the ceorl seeks when his herd has the murrain, or the girl when her false love forsakes her; we, who have no dwelling known to man; but are found at need in the wold or the cave, or the side of dull slimy streams where the murderess-mother hath drowned her babe.
Upon this gate sate, quite unmoved and apathetic, a tall ceorl, or labourer, while behind it was a gazing curious group of men of the same rank, clad in those blue tunics of which our peasant's smock is the successor, and leaning on scythes and flails. Sour and ominous were the looks they bent upon that Norman cavalcade.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking