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villan" as " one who takes to wife a gentle lady , just as if one should graft a delicate pear on a cabbage , or on a wild pear-tree , or on a turnip . " The trouveres depicted to their lords the jealousy and hatred with which the villan , in revenge , ¦ regarded'" all gentility . "
" The doggish villan is he who sits before his door on holy days and Sundays ( when , as in the Anglo-Saxon laws , he was prohibited from working ) , and mocks all who pass ; and if he see pass a gentleman with a hawk on his fist , he will cry out , ' Ha , that kite there will eat to-night a hen , which would be sufficient to fill all my children . '" "Why should villans eat beef , or any dainty food ? " inquires the
writer of a short metrical piece , entitled " Le Despit au Vilain . " " They ought to eat for their Sunday diet , nettles , reeds , briars , and straw , while pea-shells are good enough for their every-day food . . . They ought to go forth naked on four feet , in the meadows , to eat grass with the horned oxen . . ... The share of the villan is folly and selfishness and filth ; if all the goods and all the gold in this world
were his , the villan would be but a villan still . " According to these same trouveres , the villan was incapable of telling truth ; he was utterly devoid of gratitude * A proverb of the thirteenth century said , "Do good to the villan , and he will do evil to . you . " And another of the same date , which would lose by being translated , inculcates the same uncharitable feeling : — -
" OInez villain , il vous poiudra ; Poinez villain , il vous oindra . " At length the time came when the villans began to have advocates . The English minstrel succeeded the Norman trouvere ; and ballads became rife advocating redress for the villan , and his natural equality with his fellow-men . The oppressive feudal system seemed to be on the brink of dissolution ; but the movement was premature , and was stifled only to break out again with redoubled vigour in the beginning of the sixteenth century .
We have no history of the English peasant / and we know little of the spirit in which he supported his sufferings . That he hated his masters there can be little doubt . A proverbial saying of the thirteenth century , " The villan always seeks to abuse gentility /* seems to show that partial insurrections of the peasantry were then
not unknown ; and the assertion ot a satirical poet ot the same period , that "A villan strikes as hard a blow as an earl or a chatelain , " was perhaps the result of experience . It was , at all events , fulfilled in France in the terrible Jacquerie of the middle of the fourteenth century , and in England in the insurrection of the peasantry under Richard II .
As early as the thirteenth century , there were villans with sufficient hardihood to speak in court in defence of their fellows ; and in the fourteenth century we find men active in the cause of affranchisement , and villans employing various means to escape from their lords' jurisdiction . The Bishop of Ely stated before the King and his Council , that Richard Spink and his brother William , his villans of his church of Ely , of his manor of Dodington , in the county of yol . i . 3 n
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Untitled Article
villan" as " one who takes to wife a gentle lady , just as if one should graft a delicate pear on a cabbage , or on a wild pear-tree , or on a turnip . " The trouveres depicted to their lords the jealousy and hatred with which the villan , in revenge , ¦ regarded'" all gentility . "
" The doggish villan is he who sits before his door on holy days and Sundays ( when , as in the Anglo-Saxon laws , he was prohibited from working ) , and mocks all who pass ; and if he see pass a gentleman with a hawk on his fist , he will cry out , ' Ha , that kite there will eat to-night a hen , which would be sufficient to fill all my children . '" "Why should villans eat beef , or any dainty food ? " inquires the
writer of a short metrical piece , entitled " Le Despit au Vilain . " " They ought to eat for their Sunday diet , nettles , reeds , briars , and straw , while pea-shells are good enough for their every-day food . . . They ought to go forth naked on four feet , in the meadows , to eat grass with the horned oxen . . ... The share of the villan is folly and selfishness and filth ; if all the goods and all the gold in this world
were his , the villan would be but a villan still . " According to these same trouveres , the villan was incapable of telling truth ; he was utterly devoid of gratitude * A proverb of the thirteenth century said , "Do good to the villan , and he will do evil to . you . " And another of the same date , which would lose by being translated , inculcates the same uncharitable feeling : — -
" OInez villain , il vous poiudra ; Poinez villain , il vous oindra . " At length the time came when the villans began to have advocates . The English minstrel succeeded the Norman trouvere ; and ballads became rife advocating redress for the villan , and his natural equality with his fellow-men . The oppressive feudal system seemed to be on the brink of dissolution ; but the movement was premature , and was stifled only to break out again with redoubled vigour in the beginning of the sixteenth century .
We have no history of the English peasant / and we know little of the spirit in which he supported his sufferings . That he hated his masters there can be little doubt . A proverbial saying of the thirteenth century , " The villan always seeks to abuse gentility /* seems to show that partial insurrections of the peasantry were then
not unknown ; and the assertion ot a satirical poet ot the same period , that "A villan strikes as hard a blow as an earl or a chatelain , " was perhaps the result of experience . It was , at all events , fulfilled in France in the terrible Jacquerie of the middle of the fourteenth century , and in England in the insurrection of the peasantry under Richard II .
As early as the thirteenth century , there were villans with sufficient hardihood to speak in court in defence of their fellows ; and in the fourteenth century we find men active in the cause of affranchisement , and villans employing various means to escape from their lords' jurisdiction . The Bishop of Ely stated before the King and his Council , that Richard Spink and his brother William , his villans of his church of Ely , of his manor of Dodington , in the county of yol . i . 3 n