When the coffin had been properly lowered into the grave, there came a dull thud. Then the gravediggers swung their shovels, filling it back in with the earth they had dug out. Everything belonging to the person lying in the coffin seemed to have been severed from this world.
Yet the living still had to live on, especially widows with children. They could no longer be as innocent and romantic as they had been as girls, nor could they still wear brightly colored dresses.
The word "village" might have some connection to villeinage. It referred to villeins. Most serfs generally lived in villages, with houses of their own, while the land they farmed belonged to the lord.
In theory, a villein could not dispose of land on his own. He could not leave freely, sell or sublet it, make a will after death, or pass the land on as an inheritance. The land was to return to the lord, who would redistribute it as he wished.
In practice, however, things were more flexible. A villein's basic obligation was to keep the land from going fallow. There was a case in a manor court where a gardener had been granted twenty acres of Williamham's land, yet had left it uncultivated for a year. The steward then ordered the gardener to fulfill the obligations attached to that land. When the gardener neither appeared in court nor paid up, the steward gave the land to someone else.
There was also the tenant Williamham. He had three sons: two elder sons who had already come of age, and one younger son. The steward assigned the land Williamham had previously cultivated to his sons. Since the youngest was too young, his brothers held the right to manage his share until he grew up, when the