"Villein" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rumor or suspicion, but only on the evidence of witnesses. It affords protection against excessive emercements, illegal distresses and various processes for debts and service due to the crown. Fines are in all cases to be proportionate to the magnitude of the offense, and even the villein or rustic is not to be deprived of his necessary chattels. There are provisions regarding the forfeiture of land for felony. The testamentary power of the subject is recognized over part of his personal estate, ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... The serf or villein was attached to the glebe or soil, and could not be severed from it, deprived of his family, or sold to another as a chattel; being retained as part of the indivisible feudal community. But the chattel slave is a "thing" incapable of family relations, ...
— Is Slavery Sanctioned by the Bible? • Isaac Allen
... Robert's Mill, and the wooden Wheel where lived the Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine hundred year old song: "Here Azor, a freeman, held one rod, but it never paid geld. Nun-nun-nunquam geldavit. Here Reinbert has one villein and four cottars with one plough—and wood for six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of ten shillings—unum molinum—one mill. Reinbert's mill—Robert's Mill. Then and afterwards and now—tunc et post et ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... which the villein became a hired labourer is obscure and an attempt was made to check it by the Statute of Labourers at the time of the Black Death. This was followed by the peasant's revolt of 1382, which corresponded to the far worse horrors of the French Jacquerie. Sharply though this was suppressed, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... he most fears and hates an oligarchy. To others, to Dr. Johnson and to Goldsmith, for example, it has seemed very clear that the interests of the poor lie with the king against the rich. Mr. Belloc sees in the feudal system strongly administered from a centre, with the villein secured in his holding and the townsman controlled and protected by his guild, if not a perfect, at least a solidly successful polity. He applauds therefore those ages in which central justice was effective, the ages of Edward I in England and ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... Of course these burdens pressed very heavily at times, and the services of the villeins were vexatious and irritating under a hard and unscrupulous lord. But there were other serious inconveniences about the condition of the villein or native. Once a villein, always a villein. A man or woman born in villeinage could never shake it off. Nay, they might not even go away from the manor to which they were born, and they might not marry without the lord's license, and for that license they always ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... 325 The wofull tale that Trevisan had told, When as the gentle Redcrosse knight did vew, With firie zeale he burnt in courage bold, Him to avenge, before his bloud were cold, And to the villein said, Thou damned wight, 330 The author of this fact we here behold, What justice can but judge against thee right,[*] With thine owne bloud to price[*] his bloud, ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser |
