Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) EditionReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Often one village was divided up among two or more manors, so different
manorial customs made living conditions different among the villagers.
Villages usually had carpenters, smiths, saddlers, thatchers, carters,
fullers, dyers, soapmakers, tanners, needlers, and brassworkers. Each
villein had his own garden in which to grow fruit and vegetables next to
his house, a pig (which fattened more quickly than other animals),
strips in the common field, and sometimes an assart [a few acres of his
own to cultivate as he pleased on originally rough uncultivated waste
land beyond the common fields and the enclosed common pastures and
meadows]. 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.
Under Edward I, villages were required to mount watches to protect life
and property and were called upon to provide one man for the army and to
pay his wages.
People told time by counting the number of rings of the church bell,
which rang on the hour. Every Sunday, the villagers went to church,
which was typically the most elaborate and centrally located building in
the village. The parishioners elected churchwardens, who might be women.
This religion brought comfort and hope of going to heaven after judgment
by God at death if sin was avoided. On festival days, Bible stories,
legends, and lives of saints were read or performed as miracle dramas.
They learned to avoid the devil, who was influential in lonely places
like forests and high mountains. At death, the corpse was washed,
shrouded, and put into a rectangular coffin with a cross on its lid.
Priests sang prayers amid burning incense for the deliverance of the
soul to God while interring the coffin into the ground. Men who did not
make a will risked the danger of an intestate and unconfessed death. The
personal property of a man dying intestate now went to the church as a
trust for the dead man's imperiled soul instead of to the man's lord.
Unqualified persons entered holy orders thereby obtaining "benefit of
clergy", and then returned to secular employments retaining this
protection.
A villein could be forever set free from servitude by his lord as in
this example:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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