William Morris's The Well at the World's End (1896) choice quotes and passages on slavery & serfdom

Some very medieval eclectic Morrissine turns of phrase:

• A few shepherds they fell in with, who were short of speech, after the manner of such men, but deemed a greeting not wholly thrown away on such goodly folk as those wayfarers.



• So they ate their meat in the wilderness, and were nowise ungleeful, for to those twain the world seemed fair, and they hoped for great things.



• So they went thence, and found the master-church, and deemed it not much fairer than it was great; and it was nowise great, albeit it was strange and uncouth of fashion.



• However, all men were armed, and they had many bows, and some of the chapmen's knaves were fell archers.



• [...] where was much recourse of merchants from many lands, and a noble market.



• When they came up to the wall they saw that it was well builded of good ashlar, and so high that they might not see the roofs of the town because of it;



• “I shall lead thee whereas we shall be somewhat out of the way of murder-carles.”

And now, on another note... here are some pieces of National Romantic myth-making working to build a peculiarly English (pre-Norman) history encompassing a society that for Morris, because of his passionate socialist beliefs, must also be inherently virtuous, comparatively equitable, and comparatively Utopian (in contrast to the evils of his time). (I conjecture that this is why the more popular targets of National Romantic myth-making in Britain, such as the Matter of Britain and Celtic folklores, are not the main meat of Morris's medieval eclectic quest novels.)

These passages show the knowledgable godfather of our young hero, Ralph, delivering some big packages of worldbuilding in infodump form and describing the less free and equal, more evil foreign lands which the quest leads them through (and which Ralph ultimately helps to free from tyranny). The passages are particularly revealing because the phrasing makes very clear, by contrast, just what are the social system and values of Ralph's homeland (the mythical pre-Norman Anglo-Saxon Britain of Utopian agrarian equality, although again, this fictional world doesn't share our geography). These shockingly (to Ralph) tyrannical foreign lands are uhhhhh not described as Eastern or Oriental in the book, and I think he is maybe trying not to make them thus - and given the time he was writing, he was probably thinking very much of colonialism and the evils of his present day in contrast to his utopian agrarian past, and not JUST of foreign people... but they are very much recognizable nonetheless as Orientalist in the context of his pseudo-medieval history. Anyway, here are three significant passages delivered by Clement as the quest progresses towards the mountains and the Well at the World's End and describing the increasingly tyrannical governments of the city-states they are passing through:

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Five quotes from Sir Walter Scott's Waverley

1. “He’s a pratty man, a very pratty man,” said Evan Dhu (now Ensign Maccombich) to Fergus’s buxom landlady.
   
   “He’s vera weel,” said the Widow Flockhart, “but no naething sae weel-far’d as your colonel, ensign.”
   
   “I was na comparing them,” quoth Evan, “nor was I speaking about his being weel-favoured; but only that Mr. Waverley looks clean-made and deliver, and like a proper lad o’ his quarters, that will not cry barley in a brulzie. And, indeed, he’s gleg aneuch at the broadsword and target. I hae played wi’ him mysell at Glennaquoich, and sae has Vich Ian Vohr, often of a Sunday afternoon."



2. The friends now parted and retired to rest, each filled with the most anxious reflections on the state of the country.



3. dressed as if her clothes had been flung on with a pitchfork,



4. The master smith, benempt, as his sign intimated, John Mucklewrath,



5. “No; he that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cotter, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.”