As, however, this arrangement excluded villeins and strangers, the franchise always belonged to a particular body in every towna body undoubtedly possessed of property, for they bore the charges of their members, and on them were assessed the subsidies and taxes voted by Parliament.

But under the reign of Henry VIII also the great right of free speech in Parliament was established; and in 1514 the king manumitted two villeins with the significant words "Whereas God created all men free," vulgarly supposed to be original with our Declaration of Independence.

The poet reckons "twenty thousand horsemen armed at all points, and more than two hundred thousand villeins and peasants, not to speak of burghers and clergy."

A statute of 1377, which requires villeins refusing to labor to be committed to prison on complaint of the landlord, without bail, itself recognizes that villeins fleeing to a town are made free after a year and day's habitation therein.