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.

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

The fathers early enacted that there should be neither bond slaves nor villeinage amongst us except captives taken in just wars and those condemned judicially to serve.

From Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of Slavery to the Present Time by Dunbar-Nelson, Alice Moore

The facts are all against them; these showing it a scheme of villeinage, more oppressive than the European serfdom of the Middle Ages.

From The Death Shot A Story Retold by Reid, Mayne

The villeinage into which the peasants had been thrust back could not, indeed, endure long, because service unwillingly rendered is too expensive to be maintained.

From A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII by Gardiner, Samuel Rawson

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