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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: YAK-ZYM |
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YEOMAN , a term of which the various meanings fall into two main divisions, first that of a class of holders of land, and secondly that of a retainer, guard, attendant or subordinate officer or official. The word appears in M.E. as 5eman, 3oman and yeman; it does not appear in O.E. Various explanations of the first part have been suggested, such as jung-mann, young man, and yeme-man, attendant, from yeme, care; but it is generally accepted that the first part is the same word as the Ger. Gau, district
district
special
body
The extent of the class covered by the word " yeoman " in England has never been very exactly defined. Not only has the meaning of the word varied from century to century, but men writing about it at the same time have given to it different interpretations. One of the earliest pictures of a yeoman is that given by Chaucer in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Here, represented as a forester, he follows the esquire as a retainer or dependant. The yeomen of the ages succeeding Chaucer are, however, practically all occupied in cultivating theland, although, doubtless from its younger sons, the class furnished retainers for the great lords, men-at-arms and archers for the wars, and also tradesmen for the towns. Stubbs (Coast. Hist. vol. iii.) refers to them as " a body
Holinshed , in his Chronicle, following Sir T. Smyth (De republics Anglorum), and W. Harrison (Description of England), describes them as having free land worth 6 annually, and in times past 4os., and as not entitled to bear arms, being for the most part farmers to gentlemen, and this description may be accepted as the popular idea of the yeoman in the 16th century. He formed the intermediate class between the gentry and the labourers and artisans, the line of demarcation, however, being not drawn
The yeomen were the smaller landholders, and in the 15th century were practically identical with the forty
tenant
opinion had been expressed about a century before by Sir John Fortescue in his Governance of England. The decay of the class began with the formation of large sheep farms in the 16th century, but its decline was very slow, and the yeomen furnished many sturdy recruits to the parliamentary party during the Civil War. Their decay was accelerated during the 18th century, when many of them were bought out by the large landowners, while they received another blow when the factory system destroyed the country's domestic industries. Many writers lament the decay of the yeoman in the 18th and 19th centuries, but this is partly accounted for by the fact that they exclude all tenant
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