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Yeomen
Some Farndales are referred to as Yeoman
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Yeoman Farndales
Richard ffarndaill (FAR00092) was
a Yeoman of Brotton and the first mentioned of Brotton. John Farndale (FAR00143), “Old
Farndale of Kilton” was a Farmer, Alum House merchant, Yeoman and Cooper. His
grandson John Farndale (FAR00217) was a
Yeoman farmer and writer.
Medieval Yeomen
The word appears in Middle English as yemen, or yoman,
and is perhaps a contraction of yeng man or yong man, meaning young man, or attendant.
In early recorded uses, a yeoman was an attendant in
a noble household.
Titles were given such as "Yeoman of the Chamber", "Yeoman of
the Crown", "Yeoman Usher", "King's Yeoman", “Yeomen Warders”, “Yeomen of the Guard”.
The Canon's Yeoman, The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales shed some light on the yeoman's
social standing in the late fourteenth century. The yeoman in The Canon's Yeoman's Tale is a
"servant" to a cleric, once finely dressed but now
impoverished. In The General Prologue, the Knight is accompanied
("served") by a yeoman who "knew the forest just as he knew
his home...this was a hunter indeed." This yeoman has a bow, arrows
and a coat and hood of "forest green", as does the yeoman
in "The Friar's Tale", who is a bailiff of the
forest. The Ellesmere
Manuscript contains an illustration of the Canon's
Yeoman. William Caxton's printing also contains a
woodcut engraving of a yeoman.
In some tales of Robin Hood,
such as A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin Hood is a
yeoman, although later retellings make him a knight. According to Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe,
Robin Hood's Band of Merry Men is composed largely of yeomen.
Yeoman Farmers in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries
From the fifteenth to eighteenth
centuries, a yeoman was "a commoner who
cultivates his own land". Yeomen farmers owned
land (freehold, leasehold or copyhold).
Their wealth and the size of their landholding varied.
Victorian Yeoman Farmers
The Collins Dictionary defines a Yeoman as
simply a man who farmed his own land. The Concise
Oxford Dictionary defined a yeoman as "a person
qualified by possessing free land of 40/- (shillings) annual [feudal] value,
and who can serve on juries and vote for a Knight of the Shire. He is sometimes described
as a small landowner, a farmer of the middle classes".
Sir Anthony
Richard Wagner, Garter Principal King of Arms,
wrote that "a Yeoman would not normally have less than 100 acres"
(40 hectares) "and in social status is one step down from the Landed gentry,
but above, say, a husbandman". Often it was hard to distinguish
minor landed gentry from the wealthier yeomen, and wealthier husbandmen from
the poorer yeomen.
Yeomen were often constables of their parish,
and sometimes chief constables of the district, shire or hundred. Many yeomen held the positions
of bailiffs for
the High Sheriff or for the shire or hundred. Other civic
duties would include churchwarden,
bridge warden, and other warden duties. It was also common for
a yeoman to be an overseer for his parish. Yeomen, whether working for
a lord, king, shire, knight, district or parish, served in localised or
municipal police forces raised by or led by the landed gentry.
Some of these roles, in particular those of constable and bailiff,
were carried down through families. Yeomen often filled ranging, roaming,
surveying, and policing roles. In districts remoter from landed gentry and burgesses,
yeomen held more official power: this is attested in statutes of the reign
of Henry VIII indicating yeomen along with
knights and squires as leaders for certain purposes.
Yeomen farmers owned
land (freehold, leasehold or copyhold).
Their wealth and the size of their landholding varied. The Concise Oxford Dictionary states
that a yeoman was "a person qualified by possessing free land of 40/-
(shillings) annual [feudal] value, and who can serve on juries and vote for
a Knight of the Shire. He is sometimes described
as a small landowner, a farmer of the middle classes". Sir Anthony
Richard Wagner, Garter Principal King of Arms,
wrote that "a Yeoman would not normally have less than 100 acres" (40
hectares) "and in social status is one step down from the Landed gentry,
but above, say, a husbandman". Often it was hard to distinguish
minor landed gentry from the wealthier yeomen, and wealthier husbandmen from
the poorer yeomen.
Yeomen
were often constables of their parish
and many yeomen held the positions of bailiffs for
the High Sheriff or for the shire or hundred.
Other civic duties would include churchwarden,
bridge warden, and other warden duties. It was also common for
a yeoman to be an overseer for his parish. Yeomen, whether working for a
lord, king, shire, knight, district or parish, served in localised or municipal
police forces raised by or led by the landed gentry. Some of these roles,
in particular those of constable and bailiff, were carried down through
families. Yeomen often filled ranging, roaming, surveying, and policing
roles. In districts remoter from landed
gentry and burgesses, yeomen held more official power.
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