A respectable class of free socagers, having in general full right of alienating their lands and holding them probably at a small certain rent from the lord of the manor, frequently occurs in the Domsday Book.
En tout cas, il y avait dans le Domsday Book des Saxons «parfaitement exempts de villenage.»
Cette classe est traitée avec respect dans les traités de Glanvil et Bracton.
Pour les vilains, ils se sont affranchis de bonne heure, au treizième et au quatorzième siècle, soit en se sauvant, soit en devenant copy-holders.
La guerre des Deux Roses releva encore les communes: avant les batailles, ordre fut donné souvent de tuer les nobles et d'épargner les roturiers.
[159]: Harrison, 275. Description of England.
[160]: Portrait d'un yeoman par Latimer, prédicateur de Henri VIII.
My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of £3 or £4 by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as he kept half a dozen men. He had walk for an hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness, with himself and his horse, while he came to the place that he should receive the king's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the king's majesty now. He married my sisters vith £5 or 20 nobles a-piece, so that he brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbours. And some alms he gave to the poor, and all this did he of the said farm. Where he that now hath it, payeth £16 by the year, or more, and is not able to do any thing for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor.
In my time my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot, as to learn me any other thing, and so I think other men did their children: he taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with strength of arms as divers other nations do, but with strength of the body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and bigger, for men shall never shoot well, except they be brought up in it: it is a worthy game, a wholesome kind of exercise, and much commended in physic.
[161]: Pictorial history, I, 802. En 1245, 1246, 1376. A. Thierry. III, 79.