Medieval word of the day

Tallage – one of the fees owed by villeins to their lords; basically a land tax, sometimes a fixed amount, sometimes determined “at will” by the lord of the manor

(a medieval villein paying taxes, or tallage, to his lord)

Medieval Word of the Day

Merchet: a fine or fee paid by a villein for permission for his daughter to marry, within or without the manor

(peasants marrying)

Medieval Word of the Day

Wood-penny: a penny required of villeins before they could gather dead wood from the forest

(an English medieval penny)

Medieval Word of the Day

The Law of a Year and a Day: one of the few ways a villein could win his freedom. If a villein escaped from his manor, took refuge in a chartered town, and was accepted into a guild without being caught and challenged by his manor lord for a year and a day, he was considered free from serfdom.

(An escaped villein had to join a guild, like this shoemakers' guild)

Medieval Word of the Day

Fees and services: what separated the freeman (or free farmer) from the villein – After paying rent for his land, the freeman owed only nominal services to the manor lord, whereas the villein owed the manor lord innumerable “fees”, including: tithes to the Church; a yearly tax called tallage; the wood-penny; fees to grind their grain at the mill; a hen or eggs for permission to keep poultry; merchet; heriot (the villein’s best beast or chattel forfeited to the lord of the manor when the villein died); mortuary (the villein’s second best beast or chattel forfeited to the Church when the villein died); and many more. A villein also owed “services” to the manor lord, including week-works (a certain number a days per week the villein was required to work on the lord’s demesne) and boon-works (extra days a villein was required to work on the lord’s demesne, usually during the height of harvest season). Villeins could also be summoned to help with repairs around the manor or at the manor house

(villeins pay fees in the form of money and animals to their lord)

Medieval Word of the Day

I'm afraid I've been neglecting this blog terribly while I finished up revising, formatting, and finally publishing my new romantic historical novel, The Lady and the Minstrel. Now that The Lady and the Minstrel is finally available for sale (see buy links in the right margin), I'll share a few new medieval words from you that appear in this novel.

Beginning with...villein.

(villeins working their lord's fields)

The class of peasants known as "villeins" in medieval England play a significant role in my story of The Lady and the Minstrel. So what were villeins?

This term "villein" is often used today as interchangeable with “serf”, but in fact a “villein” was an unfree peasant on the higher social end among the serfs, while a “cottar” was at the bottom of the social scale among the serfs, the scale being determined by the amount of land one possessed and the number of fees and services owed to the manor lord. Whether villein or cottar, both were “unfree” peasants. At the same time, they were not slaves. Serfs at any level could not be sold, although the land they worked on could be sold and thereby bring the serf under the authority of another manor lord. Each serf held some land of his own on which he could raise crops to support himself and if he managed to grow any excess, he could sell that excess for profit. Serfs had some rights and privileges that the manor lord was (in theory) required to respect. It was technically illegal for a manor lord to separate a serf from his lands and send him to work on a different manor, although one manor lord in The Lady and the Minstrel does exactly that with one of the characters. It was also illegal for a serf to leave his land and go live somewhere else, with the exception of the Law of a Year and a Day. Although Robert’s mother was a cottar and his father a villein, I use the term “villein” throughout The Lady and the Minstrel to simplify the class of unfree peasants for the reader.