62 
SER 
Although they built castles and made freeholders, yet were 
there no tenures and services reserved to the crown; but the 
lords drew all the respect and dependency of the common 
people unto themselves. Davies. —Actual duty; office.— 
The order of human society cannot be preserved, nor the 
services requisite to the support of it be supplied, without a 
distinction of stations, and a long subordination of offices. 
Rogers. —Employment; business.—If stations of power and 
trust were constantly made the rewards of virtue, men of 
great abilities would endeavour to excel in the duties of a re¬ 
ligious life, in order to qualify themselves for public service. 
Swift. —Military duty.—When he cometh to experience of 
service abroad, or is put to a piece or pike, he maketh a 
worthy soldier. Spenser. —A military achievement.—Such 
fellows will learn you by rote where services were done, at 
such and such a breach. Shakspeare. —Purpose; use.—All 
the vessels of the king’s house are not for uses of honour, 
some be common stuff, and for mean services, yet profit¬ 
able. Spelman. —Useful office; advantage conferred.— 
Gentle streams visit populous towns in their course, and are 
at once of ornament and service to them. Pope. —Favour. 
To thee a woman’s services are due. 
My fool usurps my body. Shakspeare. 
Public office of devotion.—According to this form of 
theirs, it must stand for a rule, no sermon, no service. 
Hooker .—A particular portion of divine service sung in ca¬ 
thedrals or churches.—Those hymns which church-musicians 
call by the technical name of services, by which they mean 
the Te Deum, Magtiifcat, &c, which the rubric ap¬ 
points to be sung after the first and second lessons at morn¬ 
ing and evening prayer. Mason. —Course ; order of dishes. 
Cleopatra made Anthony a supper sumptuous and royal ; 
howbeit there was no extraordinary service seen on the 
board. Hakewill. —A tree and fruit. See Sorbus. —Oc¬ 
tober is drawn in a garment of yellow and carnation; in his 
left hand a basket of services, medlars and other fruits that 
ripen late. Peach am. 
SERVICE, or Servage, Servitium in Law, a duty 
which the tenant, by reason of his fee, owes to the lord. 
SERVICE, Real, is either urbane or rustic; which two 
kinds differ, not in the place, but the thing. The first is 
that due from a building or house, in whatever place situate, 
whether in city or in country, as keeping a drain, a vista, or 
the like. 
SERVICES, Rustic, are those due for grounds, where 
there is no building ; such is the right of passage through 
ways, &c. 
There are also natural services. For instance, if a man 
cannot gather the produce of his lands, without passing- 
through his neighbour’s grounds, the neighbour is obliged 
to allow a passage as a natural service. 
SERVICE, Frank, Servitium liberum, a service done 
by the feudatory tenants, who were called liberi homines, 
and distinct from vassals; as was likewise their service; for 
they were not bound to any base services, but only to find a 
man and horse to attend the lord into the army or court. 
SERVICE, Base: see Villenage.—Service, Bord: see 
Boro Service.—Service, Heriot: seellERiOT.— Service, 
Oveltv of: see Ovf.lty. — Service, Suit of: see Suit. 
SERVICEABLE, ad). Active; dihgent; officious. 
I know thee well, a serviceable villain ; 
As duteous to the vices of thy mistress 
As badness could desire. Shakspeare. 
Useful; beneficial.—A book to justify the revolution, arch¬ 
bishop Tillotson recommended to the king as the most ser 
viceable treatise that could have been published then. Swift. 
SE'RVICEABLY, adv. So as to be serviceable. 
SE'RVICEABLENESS, s. Officiousness; activity.—He 
might continually be in her presence, shewing more hum¬ 
ble serviccaklencss and joy to content her than ever before. 
Sidney. —Usefulness; beneficialness.—All action being for 
some end, its aptness to be commanded or forbidden must 
be founded upon its serviceableness or disserviceableness to 
some end. Norris. 
SER 
SERVICE-TREE, in Botany, a corruption of the Latin 
Sorbus ; see that article, as well as PyrUs. 
SERVICE-TREE, Wild, See Crataegus. 
SE'RVIENT, ad), [serviens, Lat.] Subordinate.-—Then 
smiled youth, and magisterial eld. Dyer. 
SERVIERES, a small town in the south-west of France, 
department of the Correze, with 1500 inhabitants; 13 miles 
south-east of Tulle. 
SE'RVILE, adj. [servilis, Lat.] Slavish; dependant; 
mean. 
Fight and die, is death destroying death: 
Where fearing dying, pays death servile breath’. Shakspeare. 
Ev’n fortune rules no more a servile land, 
Where exil’d tyrants still by turns command. Pope „ 
Fawning; cringing.—The most servile flattery is lodged' 
the most easily in the grossest capacity; for their ordinary 
conceit draweth a yielding to their greaters, and then have 
they not wit to discern the right degrees of duty. Sidney. 
SERVILE, in Hebrew Grammar, the denomination of 
a class of letters used in contradistinction to radical. The 
latter constitute roots (which see), and the former constitute 
derivatives, or branches from these roots, and are employed 
in all the different flexions. Of all the twenty-two letters of 
the alphabet, any of which may be radicals, there are pro¬ 
perly only eleven letters that can claim this title, because 
they never can be serviles. The serviles are the other eleven 
letters, by means of which the whole business of flexion, de¬ 
rivation, numbers, genders, persons and tenses, is accom¬ 
plished. But even these letters are somewhat limited in their 
servile power. For only two of them, viz., and i can be 
inserted or ingrafted between radical letters; the others must 
be either prefixed or postfixed to the root. 
SERVILELY, ado. Meanly ; slavishly. 
T’ each changing news, they chang’d affections bring, 
And servilely from fate expect a king. Dryden. 
He affects a singularity in his actions and thoughts, rather 
than servilely to copy from the wisest. Swift. 
SERVILENESS, or Servility, s . Subjection; invo¬ 
luntary obedience.—What, besides this unhappy servility 
to custom, can possibly reconcile men that own Christianity 
to a practice widely distant from it?—Meanness; depend- 
ance; baseness.—'Submission from fear.—The angels and 
daemons, those by their subserviency, and these by the ser¬ 
vility of their obedience, manifestly declared Christ and his 
apostles to be vested with an authority derived from their 
Lord. West. —Slavery; the condition of a slave. 
To be a queen in bondage, is more vile 
Than is a slave in base servility ; 
For princes should be free. Shakspeare. 
SERVIN (Louis), a celebrated lawyer in France, who 
flourished at the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeeth 
centuries, was descended from a good family in the Vendo- 
mois. He distinguished himself by his zealous support of 
the liberties of the Gallican church, and his opposition to 
the pretensions of the court of Rome. His printed pleadings 
were honoured with the censure of the Sorbonne, and with a 
virulent attack by a Jesuit of Provence. The title of his 
work was “ Actions notables et Plaidoyers.” In 1590 he 
published a work in favour of Henry IV., who had suceeeded 
to the crown, entitled, “ Vmdicise secundum Libertatem 
Ecclesioe Gallican.Ee, et Defensio Regii Status Gallo-Franco- 
rum sub Henrico IV. Rege.’’ In 1598, being joined in a 
commission for the reformation of the university of Paris, he 
delivered “ a remonstrance” on the subject, which was 
printed. To him also is attributed a work in favour of the 
republic of Venice, in the affairs of the Interdict. In the 
reign of Lewis XIII., at a bed of justice holden in 1620, he 
made strong and animated remonstrances in favour of the 
right of parliament to register royal edicts. On another si¬ 
milar occasion, for the purpose of compelling the registry of 
some financial edicts, as he was firmly but respectfully 
making fresh remonstrances to his majesty, he suddenly fell 
and expired at the king’s feet. 
SERVING- 
