Villein

“ Villenage—The Servi in Germany, mentioned by Cæsar and Tacitus, the predecessors of the Socmen or socage tenants in the feudal monarchy—Villeins in gross and villeins belonging to the land of the Lord—The condition of villeins—The different ways by which a man may become a villein—The means by which villenage or its effects may be suspended. ”

“ And a villein shall be amerced after the same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall be assessed but by the oath of honest men in the neighbourhood. ”

“ The lord of the manor was a thane or 'hlaford.' The demesne land was the thane's inland. All classes of villeins were called geneats. The land in villenage was the geneat-land, or the gesettes-land, or sometimes the gafol-land. And further, this geneat-, or gesettes-, or gafol-land was composed, like the later land in villenage, of hides and yard-lands, whilst the villein tenants of it, as in the Domesday Survey, were divided mainly into two classes: (1) the geburs (villani proper) , or holders of yard-lands; and (2) the cottiers with their smaller holdings. ”

“ Both ceorls and geburs disappear as separate classes, and it is clear that the greater part of them must have passed into the rank of villeins.
In the terminology of the Domesday Inquest we find the villeins as the most numerous element of the English population. Out of about 240,000 households enumerated in Domesday 100,000 are marked as belonging to villeins. They are rustics performing, as a rule, work services for their lords. ”

“ But such free holdings were no part of their virgates. The virgates and half-virgates were held in villenage. Of these they were not free tenants, but villein tenants. So also the lesser cottage holdings were held in villenage. But the holders of virgates and half-virgates were the highest grades in the hierarchy of tenants in villenage. They not only held the greater part of the open fields in their bundles of scattered strips; the rolls also show that they almost exclusively served as jurors in the 'Halimot,' or Court of the Manor ”

“ We might expect to find married brothers or even married cousins under one roof. Eighthly, there seems no reason why we should not allow the free family some slaves: perhaps a couple of huts inhabited by slaves; there had been war enough. Ninthly, the villein of the thirteenth century will often possess a full virgate of 30 acres, and yet will spend quite half his time in cultivating his lord’s demesne. Tenthly, in Domesday Book the case of the villanus who holds an integral hide is by no means unknown [1728] , nor the case of the villanus who has a full team of oxen. ”

“ Most villeins did not venture beyond their village except for about ten miles to a local shrine or great fair a couple times a year. At the fair might be fish, honey, spices, salt, garlic, oil, furs, silks, canvas, soap, pans, pots, grindstones, coal, nails, tar, iron, shovels, brushes, pails, horses, and packsaddles. Early apothecaries might sell potions there. Men and women looking for other employment might attend to indicate their availability. ”

“ No doubt the villeins usually do some labour upon the lord’s demesne lands. In particular they help to plough it. A manor, we can see, is generally so arranged that the ratio borne by the demesne oxen to the demesne land will be smaller than that borne by the villeins’ oxen to the villeins’ land. Thus, to give one example out of a hundred, in a Somersetshire manor the lord has four hides and three teams, the villeins have two hides and three teams [183] . But then the lord gets some help in his agriculture from those who are undoubtedly free tenants. ”

“ The villeins, poor churls, spend their days with shovel, mattock, or in mechanic toil. Doubtless, they can grow wheat, raise pigs, weave cloth, or build houses better than their masters, but in the use of arms how utterly are they inferior. ”

“ It seems certain, therefore, that God has no such love for villeins as he has for gentle knights and their dames. The knights display their superiority by always reminding their peasants of their condition. With some barons, to flog their villein for most trifling offenses is about as common as for them to eat their dinners. Even Conon271 has plenty of use for his riding whip. Unless the blows are very brutal the average peasant takes this as all in the day's work. He merely trades out his own blows upon his wife and children. ”

“ And it is to be noted that none of the above-mentioned villeins can give their daughters in marriage, nor cause their sons to be tonsured, nor can they cut down timber growing on the lands they hold, without licence of the bailiff or sergeant of the lord, and then for building purposes and not otherwise. And after the death of any one of the aforesaid villeins, the lord shall have as a heriot his best animal, if he had any; if, however, he have no living beast, the lord shall have no heriot, as they say. ”

“ Master Francis Villon, being banished France, fled to him, and got so far into his favour as to be privy to all his household affairs. One day the king, being on his close-stool, showed Villon the arms of France, and said to him, Dost thou see what respect I have for thy French kings? I have none of their arms anywhere but in this backside, near my close-stool. Ods-life, said the buffoon, how wise, prudent, and careful of your health your highness is! ”

“ But now, in the fifteenth century, it had been not only a town but a great town for more than a century--a town, that is, in which men live entirely, almost ignorant of the fields, observing only other men, and forgetting the sky. The keen edge of such a life, its bitterness, the mockery and challenge whereby its evils are borne, its extended knowledge, the intensity of its spirit--all these are reflected in Villon, and first reflected in him. ”

“ I have had the opportunity for thirty years and more of observing Villemain, a man of distinguished intellect and talent, who is actually brimming over with generous, liberal, philanthropic, Christian, civilising sentiment, but who is, nevertheless, the most sordid, malicious ape in existence. What is to be done in such a case? Are we to go on to all eternity praising his noble, elevated sentiments, as those by whom he is surrounded do? Are we to dupe ourselves and dupe others? ”

“ And I find you up, wandering homeless, and picking farthings off dead women by the wayside! I fear no man and nothing; I have seen you tremble and lose countenance at a word. I wait God's summons contentedly in my own house, or, if it please the king to call me out again, upon the field of battle. You look for the gallows; a rough, swift death, without hope or honor. Is there no difference between these two?"
"As far as to the moon," Villon acquiesced. "But if I had been born lord of Brisetout, and you had been the poor scholar Francis, would the difference have been any the less? ”

“ Associated also with this wildness is a curious imperfection in our knowledge of him. His very name is not his own--or any other man's. His father, if it were his father, took his name from Mont-Corbier--half noble. Villon is but a little village over beyond the upper Yonne, near the division, within a day of the water-parting where the land falls southward to Burgundy and the sun in what they call "The Slope of Gold." From this village a priest, William, had come to Paris in 1423. ”

“ Since his pen first wrote, a shining acerbity like the glint of a sword-edge has never deserted the literature of the capital.
It was not only the metropolitan, it was the Parisian spirit which Villon found and fixed. That spirit which is bright over the whole city, but which is not known in the first village outside; the influence that makes Paris Athenian.
The ironical Parisian soul has depths in it. It is so lucid that its luminous profundity escapes one--so with Villon. Religion hangs there. Humility--fatally divorced from simplicity--pervades it. It laughs at itself. ”

“ Villon admitted with a quaver.
88. “Perhaps a fellow murdered?”
89. “Oh, no, not murdered,” said the poet, more and more confused. “It was all fair play—murdered by accident. I had no hand in it, God strike me dead!” he added, fervently.
90. “One rogue the fewer, I dare say,” observed the master of the house.
91. “You may dare to say that,” agreed Villon, infinitely relieved. “As big a rogue as there is between here and Jerusalem. He turned up his toes like a lamb. But it was a nasty thing to look at. I dare say you’ve seen dead men in your time, my lord?” he added, glancing at the armor. ”

“ He had him taught, he designed him for the University, he sheltered him in his vagaries, he gave him asylum. The young man took his name and called him "more than father." His anxious life led on to 1468, long after the poet had disappeared.
For it is in 1461, in his thirtieth year, that Villon last writes down a verse. It is in 1463 that his signature is last discovered. Then not by death or, if by death, then by some death unrecorded, he leaves history abruptly--a most astonishing exit!... You may pursue fantastic legends, you will not find the man himself again. ”

“ I behaved to Monsieur de Villenave as I do to everybody; only, as he was three parts through with his lecture when we arrived, I began by looking at the man instead of listening to what he was saying.
He was in those days a tall old man of sixty four or sixty five, with fine silvery white hair, a pale complexion and dark flashing eyes. His dress showed that sort of careless carefulness peculiar to busy men who make a regular toilet two or three times in the week at the outside, spending all the rest of their time in dressing-gown and slippers amid the dust of their working-room. ”

“ So had Villon become a very great poet whose art was a fine blending of mirth and of pathos and of faith, and so might he hope to win to high honors in Antan, where, if anywhere, poets were properly rewarded. And the squalor and degradation of his terrestrial living were, now, but so many picturesque ingredients in the superb poem of his life, now that Villon too was—just as his Roman confrère had pointed out,—to be regarded as a character in a book. ”

“ It was the best place from which to see it, if its real grandeur were to be appreciated, he said—or else to go to Villeneuve, across the Rhône, which we dared not steal time to do; but the Turnours were certain not to think of anything so esoteric in the way of sight-seeing.
The vastness of the stupendous mass of brick and stone took my breath away for an instant, as I raised my eyes to look up, on a signal of "Now!" from Mr. Dane. It seemed as if all the history, not alone of Old Provence, but of France, might be packed away behind those tremendous buttresses. ”

“ Pleased with the praise Villon turned to the king.
"Sire, I have blown it abroad that your majesty feasts to-night. While the Duke of Burgundy believes us to be carousing, we shall make a sortie from St. Anthony's gate. Our horses' hooves will be muffled, no spur shall jingle, and no bridle clink. We will steal through the night like shadows. At the cross road some few of us will make an attack upon the enemy's left and beat a retreat. ”

“ Villette is one blaze, one broad illumination; the whole world seems abroad; moonlight and heaven are banished: the town by her own flambeaux, beholds her own splendour—gay dresses, grand equipage, fine horses and gallant riders, throng the bright streets. ”

“ Villon cursed his fortune. Would it were still snowing! Now, wherever he went, he left an indelible trail behind him on the glittering streets; wherever he went, he was still tethered to the house by the cemetery of St. John; wherever he went, he must weave, with his own plodding feet, the rope that bound him to the crime and would bind him to the gallows. The leer of the dead man came back to him with new significance. He snapped his fingers as if to pluck up his own spirits, and, choosing a street at random, stepped boldly forward in the snow. ”

“ Villon looked at him for a moment in silence and then went out of the room and descended the steps, opened the little door, and passed into the garden. The summer sun was dying in a splendid riot of colour among the rose trees. Its last rays, falling on the face of the god Pan, illuminated his fantastic features and seemed to lend them the life of an ironic leer. The warm air was rich with the blended odours of a thousand blossoms, and from the palace, faint and far off, came the sound of joyous voices. ”

“ Apart from its piety and its exquisite tenderness, two qualities of Villon are to be specially found in this poem: his vivid phrase, such as:
"Emperiere des infernaux paluz,"
(a discovery of which he was so proud that he repeated it elsewhere) or:
"sa tres chiere jeunesse."
And secondly the curiously processional effect of the metre and of the construction of the stanzas--the extra line and the extra foot lend themselves to a chaunt in their balanced slow rhythm, as any one can find for himself by reading the lines to some church sing-song as he goes. ”

“ All French folk, whereso'er ye be, Who love your country, sail and sand, From Paris to the Breton sea, And back again to Norman strand, Forsooth ye seem a silly band, Sheep without shepherd, left to chance— Far otherwise our Fatherland, If Villon were the King of France! The figure on the throne you see Is nothing but a puppet, planned To wear the regal bravery Of silken coat and gilded wand. Not so we Frenchmen understand The Lord of lion's heart and glance, And such a one would take command If Villon were the King of France! ”

“ Within the old walls of its immense abbey the town of Villeneuve has built itself a rough faubourg; the fragments with which the soil was covered having been, i suppose, a quarry of material. There are no streets; the small, shabby houses, almost hovels, straggle at random over the uneven ground. The only important feature is a convent of cloistered nuns, who have a large garden (always within the walls) behind their house, and whose doleful establishment you look down into, or down at simply, from the battlements of the citadel. ”