supposed the latter were held, as well as their utter privation of all legal rights, ia forcibly disproved by the "Rolls of the King's Courts," in which we find many instances of servants carrying on suits against their lords, and of small freeholders bringing actions against the great noblss and landholders for unjust dispossession.
Isabel de Bennington summonses the celebrated Baron Fitzwalter, the lord of sixty-six knights' fees, for dispossessing her of her free tenement, probably little more than a cottage. Eililda, a widow charges Thomas Fitz-Thomas with similar injustice.
In the latter Eustance the noble vindicated his right by asserting that her two sons were his villeins, or vassals; this was denied.
Although the result of the suit cannot be ascertained, it corroborates the opinion of Sir Francis Palgrave, that villenage was not a state of bondage.
"Although, according to legal language, the villein might be given, bequeathed, or sold, these expressions, which sound so harshly, and seem so inconsistent with any degree of personal liberty, bore a meaning essentially different from that which we would now assign them. In no instance can we find the ceorl or villein separate from his land. He was always a villein appurtenant; and notwithstanding the language employed, the gift, bequest, or sale, was the disposition of the land and his services."[1]
Does not the view of this able writer derive confirmation from that very passage in the Annals of Dunstable so frequently brought forward to prove that slavery then existed; and which records, in the year 1283, that "we sold our slave by birth, William Pike, and all his family, for one mark." Surely £10 present money would have been altogether inadequate to the purchase of one person. Is it not therefore evident that this one mark was a mere fine, paid on the transference of the land held by William Pike, and by consequence his services, which were in lieu of rent?
Another instance that the villein was capable of exercising the right of a freeman may be found in the case of Ralph Clair, in which it was decided that he could not hold land, and that he be amerced for making the claim.
Here the judge, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, imposes a pecuniary fine on one of a class which we have been told, on grave authority, had no legal right to the possession of money.
The very curious entries in the "Boulden book," which records the inquisition made by Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham, in 1183, corroborate this view of the subject.
The villeins of Boldenare held each thirty acres of land, and their payments are partly in service, partly in kind, and partly in money. In Southbydyk the villeins held their ville in farm, and find "eight score men to reap in autumn; thirty-six wagons to carry the corn; and they beside pay £5." Many of the entries in this ancient document are very curious: at harvest time it is determined that the whole household shall turn out to work, "exceptâ housewifâ" and this respectful attention to the mistress of the house is repeated in every entry.
CHAPTER LIII.
Great Seal of Henry III.
Henry III, or, as he was more generally designated, Henry of Winchester, was only ten years of age when the death of his father called him to the throne. It was almost an empty honour, the kingdom being in a most distracted state. London and the southern counties acknowledged the authority of his rival Louis, to whom the King of Scotland and the Welsh prince had taken the oath of fealty as vassals.
In this position there were only two parties on whom the youthful monarch could rely for any effectual support: the first consisted of the barons and foreign mercenaries who had remained faithful to the late king; the second was the papal see, which, since the degrading surrender of the crown by John, considered itself lord paramount of England, and in that capacity naturally exerted all its influence to secure the succession to the son of him who had bestowed upon it so rich a gift.
- ↑ Vide Sir F. Palgrave's "English Commonwealth."
