One who supports his barons with sword and mail, and gives the villeins rebelling against them but the brand and the cord.
At the head of forty thousand horse he published proclamations, revoking the charters of manumission which he had granted, commanding the villeinsto perform their usual services, and prohibiting illegal assemblies and associations.
It is said that the term was applied by the lords of the manor to their villeins or serfs, in derision of their awkwardness and patient endurance of their lot.
The Bishop's Court at Littleport was certainly enforcing agreements and it was difficult to suppose that the villeins of Littleport put their contracts into writing.
From 1351 the masters' preferential claim to the villeinsof their own manor disappears, or is greatly limited.
The villeins themselves sought to procure enfranchisement, and the right to hire themselves out to their lords, or to any master they might choose.
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.
All England was used to sumptuary laws, laws regulating the price of commodities, and villeins still existed.
A statute of 1377, which requires villeins refusing to labor to be committed to prison on complaint of the landlord, without bail, itself recognizes that villeins fleeing to a town are made free after a year and day's habitation therein.
The last article declared that neither serfs nor the sons of villeins were to be ordained without the consent of the lord on whose land they were born.
Finally, let there be no more villeins in England, but grant us all to be free and of one condition.
Inequalities of wealth and social position were to be ended: "Good people, things will never go well in England, so long as goods be not kept in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen.
Another story (told at the monastery) has it that the devil has refused to receive more villeins into hell because they smell so vilely!
Villeins somehow feel that they are better treated by a bishop or abbot than by the most benevolent of seigneurs.
Two villeins dispute the ownership of a yoke of oxen.
In Champagne and central France there were still so many serfs that very possibly the peasants of St. Aliquis were more fortunate than the majority of the villeins on neighboring baronies.
It is one of the glories of the Church that, thanks to her, the children of poorvilleins can receive the homage of the great in this world.
The St. Aliquis villeins seem doltish and dirty enough, but they are nothing to those existing in Flanders.
Only rarely are the villeins comforted by being told that if they work faithfully and bring up a proper family they are morally on equality "with a cleric who chants all day in a church.
Naturally, the villeinsseldom get enough ahead to be able to learn the practices of thrift.
Indeed, it is commonly said that mostvilleins are so numb mentally they never can comprehend the simplest orders unless they are driven home with stripes.
That great expounder of the ancient law, Mr. Hargrave, says, "Our Year Books and Books of Entries are full of the forms used in pleading a title to villeins regardant.
The steward kept watch that no land of servile tenure should be treated as free, and the villeins themselves were very unwilling that a villein should set up as a freeman on the ground of holding a freehold acre (164).
The process of converting slaves and villeins into servants and free peasantry had ended; that of raising a manufacturing populace and converting peasantry into poor was but begun; and it proceeded slowly for a full hundred years.
Children will rise against their elders and the villeins will assail the nobles.
In others, adopting the exclusive principle that villeins and strangers were no part of the burgesses, new corporations were erected, and the elective franchise was more or less confined to a select body.
He hearkened to the cries and the tidings, the plaints and the burdens, raised by those villeins whose granges and bields were pillaged for the sustenance of his foes.
The Damoiseau seized Poignant's wood, hay, and horses to the value of one hundred and twenty golden crowns, which amount the said Poignant reclaimed from the nobles and villeins of Greux and Domremy.
Unable to exact ransom from the villeins who had taken flight, the men-at-arms had destroyed all their goods.
The folk seize their weapons; soldiers, burgesses, villeins mount guard on the outworks, on the walls and in the streets.
A crowd of citizens, villeins and villagers rushed into the abandoned forts.
Nay," said I, "there shall be novilleins in England.
For I must tell you that I knew somehow, but I know not how, that the men of Essex were gathering to rise against the poll-groat bailiffs and the lords that would turn them all into villeins again, as their grandfathers had been.
In time the villeinsgenerally obtained the privilege of paying a fixed money rent, in place of labor, and their condition gradually improved.
Villeins appear, however, to have had the right of voting for knights of the shire until the statute of 1430 difranchised them.
The ecclesiastics on this domain had exhausted every possible means of injuring the unfortunate peasants, and numbers of free villeins had been converted into serfs by means of forged documents.
Tresilian worked so well that he is said to have strung up a dozen villeins to a single beam in Chelmsford because he had no time to have them executed regularly.
The landowners found thousands of the crofts on which their villeins had been wont to dwell vacant, and could not fill them with new tenants.
Great noblemen, whose right to the services of their villeins had been denied, now made common cause with the great churchmen.
The landlords in many places now declared the bargain to have been unfair, and compelled the villeins to render once more the old bodily service.
The lords of manors indeed abandoned the old system of cultivating their own lands by the labour of villeins, or by labourers hired with money paid by villeins in commutation for bodily service.
If we give thevilleins but 4 oxen to the team, how many shall we give the sokemen?
But over against the state the lord represents as well the land of his villeins as his own demesne land.
In legal logic the lord's liability for the geld that is apportioned on the land occupied by his villeins may be rather an effect than a cause.
There is land for 6 teams and there are 6 teams on it; but 2 of these teams belong to villeins and 2 to sokemen.
There are d teams on the demesne and the villeins have e teams.
The roturiers, or villeins who were not in a state of thraldom, were already a numerous class not only in the towns but in the country.
Villeins ought to be satisfied with the lot which the good God has marked out for them, and with the honour of serving a noble House.
And the villeins need their Evangel, Damoiselle; for they have nothing else.
Why, if there were no order kept, the nobles and the villeinswould be all mixed up with each other, and some of the more intelligent and ambitious of the villeins might even begin to fancy themselves on a par with the nobles.
The villeins were always serfs, saleable with the land on which they lived, bound to the service of its owner, disposable at his pleasure, and esteemed by him very little superior to cattle.
As,--that Jerusalem is very badly supplied with water, and the villeins collect and drink only rain-water.
But I cannot imagine why villeins cannot be contented with their place.
The villeins have a hard lot, as the good God knows; but all the sorrow of life is not for the villeins--no, no!
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "villeins" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
