Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/103

 THE ANCESTOR 63 and franklins, and the ignohiles^ consisting of villeins, citizens and burgesses ; that a great order of franklins or free-tenants was forming in the latter half of the twelfth century, owing to the pressure of military service upon the lords of manors and the desire of the latter to surround themselves with tenants who could be depended upon to fight under their banners and to do suit at their courts ; that this order, or subdivision of the nohileSy bound together without distinction of rank or birth poor freeholders and persons whom we should now describe as wealthy and distinguished country gentlemen, and that it long held the balance of political power, supporting the barons against the usurpations of the Crown and the Crown against the ambition of the greater feudatories. Let us assume that the yeomanry,^ or order of tenant-farmers, sprang into existence after freeman was by hot iron, for the burgess or villein by water (Bigelow's Placita, p. 231 ; Glanvill, xiv. i). Any freeman who took to public trading was held to * degenerate from the dignity of his rank ' {Dialogue of the Exchequer, ii. xiii.). In the fourteenth century the position of the burgess was anomalous, but he was still theoretically a villein, or at best a freedman as opposed to a freeman. The ruling citizens of corporate towns are sometimes spoken of as nohiles, perhaps in the sense that they were free tenants. 1 Our historians have misunderstood the meaning of the terms * yeoman ' and * husbandman.' The Petition against Livery of 1400— i and the Com- mission of 1433 describe all who are not knights and esquires as * yeomen,' and it is clear that a great many lords of manors and representatives of ancient houses must have been included in this class {Rot. Pari. iii. 478 ; iv. 456). fifteenth century vocabulary I find scutlger rendered as * geman.' Professor Skeat in his Etymolo^cal Dictionary derives yeoman from ga, a district or village. This is impossible. The word * yeoman ' cannot be traced before the four- teenth century, and in the word-books of the fifteenth it is translated 'as effebus, valectus. It is an English rendering of the older Norman-French valet, a young man or page. In 1279-80 Roger de Wanstede held land in sergeanty in that place by the service of finding one valet for eight days at his own charges, armed with pourpoint, iron cap and lance, to guard the castle of Portsmut in time of war. Hewitt, Ancient Arms, i. 239 ; see also ArchceologLa, xxvi. 328-9. In the ordinances made by the Earl of Shrewsbury at his sieges in Mayne the archers are described as * yeomen,' while the men- at-arms are apparently spoken of as ' gentellmen ' (Nicholas, Agincourt, app. 42-3). In these ordinances the form * yogmen ' occurs, and in the statute of 33 Henry VIII. cap. 10 we have the word at full length as *yongemen.' I have met in the reign of Elizabeth with yeomen who were lords of manors and with others whose incomes were equal to four or five thousand a year of modern money. * Husbandman ' in the first half of the fifteenth century means simply * householder,' or head of a family, and has nothing to do with husbandry. Mr. Barron has pointed out to me a document in which the eldest son of an esquire is described as a, husbandman. £
 * Yeoman ' was a designation which at first expressed military rank, and in a