GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 93 



fore have no more than a temporary significance. We know, 

 too, that the policy of the court was not unfriendly to the eman- 

 cipation of the serfs, that every construction which lawyers could 

 put upon usage or statute was favourable to the freedom of the 

 serf; and we also know that in after years, the king put his 

 veto on those resolutions of the Commons, by which they 

 intended to subject the condition of villenage to social dis- 

 abilities. This is particularly the case in the answer given 

 to the petitions of Parliament in 1391, when the king declines 

 to accede to the request that the sons of villains should not be 

 allowed to frequent the Universities, and to the complaint 

 that villains fly to cities and boroughs, and are there harboured, 

 and that the lord on attempting to recover his villain is hin- 

 dered by the people ; with a suggestion that the remedy might 

 be allowed of seizing the villain without regard to the fran- 

 chises of the place in which he had taken refuge. When the 

 alarm felt at the actual insurrection was past away, we may 

 well conceive that the court was disinclined to strengthen "the 

 lords, by tightening the bonds of servitude. 



There was great reason in the dislike felt at any proposal 

 for manumission. The customary payments in lieu of service 

 were, as has been stated, of great significance in the ordinary 

 income of the lords, and they would have looked with alarm 

 at a project which would deprive them of an important source 

 of revenue. So important were these commuted payments 

 and contingent advantages, that long afterwards, when vil- 

 lenage was wholly extinct, but the incidents of knight-service 

 were increasingly severe, the mesne lords declined to accede 

 to the proposal of James the First (1610), by which all these 

 rights Should be extinguished and a fixed rent substituted for 

 them, and ultimately, at the Restoration, contrived, when their 

 own estates were emancipated from wardship and marriage,, 

 to effect that the compensation made to the crown for the 

 loss of these contingencies should be met by a general tax on 

 the whole community, and to still retain their rights over 

 their own copyholders. 



