villeinage

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

One of your most illustrious judges, who was also a profound and philosophical historian, has said "that villeinage was not abolished, but went into decay in England."

From Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Comprising the Writings of Hammond, Harper, Christy, Stringfellow, Hodge, Bledsoe, and Cartrwright on This Important Subject by Elliott, E. N.

In the new French possessions, villeinage and servitude were abolished, with a haste and recklessness which was intended to win the people to the new dominion.

From Pictures of German Life in the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries, Vol. I. by Freytag, Gustav

By these provisions both villeinage or land-serfdom and the slavery of debtor classes to capital were to be prevented in the new nation.

From The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible by Newton, R. Heber

Yea," said he, "that wot I well, that these are of the kin of the daughters of the horse-leech; but how shall they slake their greed, seeing that as thou sayest villeinage shall be gone?

From A Dream of John Ball; and, a king's lesson by Morris, William

In the seventy years which had intervened since the last peasant rising, villeinage had died naturally away before the progress of social change.

From History of the English People, Volume III The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 by Green, John Richard