distinction between “villeinage in gross” and “villeinage regardant” to soothe their souls. Those at the bottom of the social and economic ladder prided themselves as much as elites on England’s mythical national commitment to liberty and they were not above reminding their countrymen about the anachronistic role of bondage in English society. During the spring and summer of 1549, for example, East Anglia erupted in one of the most sustained popular uprisings in Tudor England. Kett’s Rebellion, as it came to be known, began when Norfolk villagers leveled the hedges of a landlord who had enclosed a portion of the common land. The uprising was sustained, however, by a deeper concern with local issues and the perception that there was a notable absence of “good government” responsive to the needs of all people. To make their grievances clear, the rebels submitted twenty-nine articles, one of which was the brash declaration that “all bonde men … be made ffre for god made all ffre with his precious blode sheddying.”49 Smith may have comforted himself with the notion that human bondage was exceedingly rare, but the Norfolk rebels thought otherwise.
Kett’s Rebellion was not really about slavery, of course, but the inclusion of this one brief statement attests to the scope of popular notions of English freedoms, and human bondage, during the sixteenth century. Like the western shires of Gloucester and Somerset, the East Anglian counties of Norfolk and Suffolk were the main centers of the lingering vestiges of villeinage in Tudor England.50 One of the most important families in the region was the Howards, the dukes of Norfolk. The Howard family fell from power in 1546 when the third duke of Norfolk was attainted, which led to the family’s lands reverting to the Crown. Subsequently, twenty-six heads of families from four Suffolk manors, formerly held by the Howards, petitioned Protector Somerset for manumission. The bondmen complained about how they had been treated by the Duke of Norfolk, who had “spoiled your said oratours of any their landes and tenementes, goddes and cattalles … with such extremitie void of any compassion pietie or reason.” Bondmen were not allowed “to marrye accordyng to the lawes of god ne yet to sette any of their children to schoole or to any kynde of learnyng without exaccions and fines.”51
The grievances of Tudor bondmen ultimately bore fruit. More than forty-six former Howard family villeins would find their way to freedom through a series of manumissions enacted after 1550.52 Aggrieved bondmen were often successful because their interests paralleled the desire of the Tudor government to put to rest for good the last vestiges of serfdom in England. Throughout the sixteenth century, on a number of occasions, the Crown made individual or sweeping manumissions, or attempted to compel English lords to free the bondmen in their possession. Tudor monarchs, however, often met fierce resistance when they tried to convince English lords to free their bondmen. In 1538, Henry VIII’s minister, Thomas Cromwell, requested the Earl of Arundel to manumit one of his bondmen. Arundel resisted, however, responding that Thomas Goodfreye “is in truth my bondman, as all his progenitors have been, and if I made him free it would be to the prejudice of my inheritance for ever. I should be glad to gratify you otherwise in a better thing.” Cromwell was equally unsuccessful in convincing Dr. John London to manumit the Alweyes family, bondmen in his college’s possession in Colern. London, who had previously been encouraged in this endeavor by Sir Henry Long and the Bishop of Winchester, protested that the college’s governing statutes would allow him to “alienate neither land nor bondmen.” But, even if he could liberate the family, he was not inclined to do so because the head of the family, the “reve and overseer of my college wood, wastes the woods and conceals the rents.” London, it seems, believed that some people deserved bondage.53
Although Tudor monarchs sympathized with the plight of their bound subjects, they rarely did more than issue polite requests for the manumission of villeins not in the Crown’s possession. In 1507, Henry VII stretched the limit of prerogative when he granted a charter for three new Welsh counties that proclaimed a general manumission for the local nativi. This exceptional case of a Tudor monarch liberating his subjects’ property angered some of his lords, who expressed their displeasure when they subsequently rejected the general bill concernes Manumissionem sevorum vocat. Bondmen.54 Thus, the best hope for bondmen with aspirations of free status was for the estate to which they were bound to fall into royal hands. In 1550, Edward VI commissioned Sir Richard Sakevile, chancellor of Augmentations, to manumit “those vyllaynes and nefes aswell regardant to our honours lordeshippes and mannours as otherwyse in gros not yet manumysed and dyscharged of their bondage.” Later, Sakevile came to terms with William Cuckoo, “bocher,” and his brother John, “villeins regardant” to the manor of Ersham. After paying £3.6.8, “William and John and their sequela” were manumitted and given rights to their goods and lands. Although they had to pay for their freedom, and although manumissions were often compulsory, evidence suggests that Tudor monarchs were eager to destroy villeinage once and for all in part because of the perception that it was a form of domestic slavery. In what may have been the most important reason of all, simply “hating slavery (servituti odientes)” moved Edward VI to manumit four Suffolk men in 1551.55
Elizabeth followed in the footsteps of her father and half-brother when she attempted to resolve the status of “divers and sundry of our poor faithful and loyal subjects” who had been “born bond in blood and regardant to divers and sundry our manors and possessions within our realm of England.” In 1574, she ordered that the bondmen in four counties be “enfranchised and made free, with their children and sequels.” In 1575, Elizabeth licensed Sir Henry Lee, a minor courtier at the time, to free additional bondmen. Lee’s first order of business was to determine how much money the queen’s villeins would be required to pay for their freedom. Once Lee and the bondmen in question came to an agreement, a charter of manumission was drawn up espousing the firm belief that “God created all men free by nature, and the law of man placed some under the yoke of servitude.” Thus, it would be “a pious thing, and acceptable to God and consonant with Christian charity” to free all bondmen. To this end, and for the greater good of his own and the royal coffers, Lee rounded up and manumitted at least 137 families, comprising nearly 500 individuals, between 1575 and 1580.56
Tudor initiatives like these aside, unfree Englishmen—villeins—continued to inhabit England well into the sixteenth century and they continued to be preyed upon by dissolute lords. One English lord, Edward Stafford, even went so far as to try to seize the mayor of Bristol, Richard Cole, as his villein during the 1580s. Still, the continuing presence of a small number of villeins did not diminish the widespread notion that England was, by nature, a free nation. In 1567, for example, Cartwright’s Case in the Star Chamber addressed the possibility of holding a Russian in bondage. Cartwright “brought a slave from Russia … for which he was questioned; and it was resolved that England was too pure an air for slaves to breathe in.” England was hardly unique in asserting its “free air,” but the case did demonstrate the powerful belief among jurists that everyone under common law was free by nature of their Englishness. At the same time, the notion that the English nation was free did not necessarily mean that human bondage was entirely unacceptable. As the Cartwright ruling asserted, England was no place for slaves, but the relics of medieval forms of human bondage could not be totally destroyed so long as English freedom also included the right of individuals to defend their ownership of human property.57
The history of domestic bondage in the sixteenth century highlights the paradoxical relationship between Englishness and slavery, for what offended most during this period was not the propriety of slavery but the arbitrary nature of a system of human bondage based entirely on descent. How, Englishmen might wonder, was it possible to be born both free (by virtue of being born in England) and in bondage (by descent)? Repeated references to the idea that God had created human beings free and that only the law could take that away undermined villeinage, especially when bondmen could assert that their condition was tantamount to slavery. Moreover, if England was, by nature or tradition, a free nation, then the continuing existence of villeinage—an institution that defined some people as unfree by birth alone—was a troublesome indicator that the barrier between slavery and Englishness was not as impenetrable as national mythologizers would have it. In this light, the Tudor government’s manumission efforts in the sixteenth century could be interpreted not simply
