Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 22, 2025
The social changes on which we have already dwelt, the facilities given to alienation and the subdivision of lands, the transition of the serf into a copyholder and of the copyholder by redemption of his services into a freeholder, the rise of a new class of "farmers" as the lords ceased to till their demesne by means of bailiffs and adopted the practice of leasing it at a rent or "farm" to one of the customary tenants, the general increase of wealth which was telling on the social position even of those who still remained in villenage, undid more and more the earlier process which had degraded the free ceorl of the English Conquest into the villein of the Norman Conquest, and covered the land with a population of yeomen, some freeholders, some with services that every day became less weighty and already left them virtually free.
Four meals a day, nor those sparing, were not deemed too extravagant an interpretation of the daily bread for which the Saxon prayed. Four meals a day, from earl to ceorl! "Happy times!" may sigh the descendant of the last, if he read these pages; partly so they were for the ceorl, but not in all things, for never sweet is the food, and never gladdening is the drink, of servitude.
However roughly he dealt with the material civilization of Britain while the struggle went on, it was impossible that such a man could be a mere destroyer. War in fact was no sooner over than the warrior settled down into the farmer, and the home of the ceorl rose beside the heap of goblin-haunted stones that marked the site of the villa he had burned.
This done the ships sail back to their haven; the thegn seeks his homestead and the ceorl returns to the plough; for with Godwin are no strangers; and his force is but the love of his countrymen." "Hast thou said?" quoth the King. "I have said." "Retire, and await our answer."
On that happy day labour rested; ceorl and theowe had alike a holiday to dance, and tumble round the May-pole; and thus, on the first of May Youth, and Mirth, and Music, "brought the summer home." It is on that second day of May, 1052, that my story opens, at the House of Hilda, the reputed Morthwyrtha.
The King's wish has its weight, no doubt, but the Witan hath its yea or its nay, and the Witan and Commons are seldom at issue thereon. Thy duke King of England! Marry! Ha! ha!" "I was born a ceorl, and my father before me," returned Sexwolf, "and I feel with my class; though my grandson may rank with the thegns, and, for aught I know, with the earls."
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.
On conviction, the culprit was compelled to pay a sum of money to the relatives of the injured, and another sum to the community at large. This compensation varied according to the rank of the injured party, and rank was determined by wealth. The owner of two hydes of land was ranked above a ceorl, or simple farmer, while the owner of twelve hydes was a royal thane.
And we tilled the land, we tended the herds, and we kept the house till the Earl came back." "Ye had moneys then, moneys of your own, ye ceorls!" said the Norman, avariciously. "How else could we buy our freedom? Every ceorl hath some hours to himself to employ to his profit, and can lay by for his own ends.
Harsh and severe were those laws in the reign of the Anglo- Saxon; as harsh and severe, perhaps, against the ceorl and the poor man, as in the days of Rufus, though more mild unquestionably to the nobles.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking