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

[cimorene]

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:

• “And now thou shalt know that this good town of Whitwall that lieth behind us is the last of the lands we shall come to wherein folk can any courtesy, or are ruled by the customs of the manor, or by due lawful Earls and Kings, or the laws of the Lineage or the Port, or have any Guilds for their guiding, and helping. And though these folks whereunto we shall come, are, some of them, Christian men by name, and have amongst them priests and religious; yet are they wild men of manners, and many heathen customs abide amongst them; as swearing on the altars of devils, and eating horse-flesh at the High-tides, and spell-raising more than enough, and such like things, even to the reddening of the doom-rings with the blood of men and of women, yea, and of babes: from such things their priests cannot withhold them. As for their towns that we shall come to, I say not but we shall find crafts amongst them, and worthy good men therein, but they have little might against the tyrants who reign over the towns, and who are of no great kindred, nor of blood better than other folk, but merely masterful and wise men who have gained their place by cunning and the high hand. Thou shalt see castles and fair strong-houses about the country-side, but the great men who dwell therein are not the natural kindly lords of the land yielding service to Earls, Dukes, and Kings, and having under them vavassors and villeins, men of the manor; but their tillers and shepherds and workmen and servants be mere thralls, whom they may sell at any market, like their horses or oxen. Forsooth these great men have with them for the more part free men waged for their service, who will not hold their hands from aught that their master biddeth, not staying to ask if it be lawful or unlawful. And that the more because whoso is a free man there, house and head must he hold on the tenure of bow and sword, and his life is like to be short if he hath not sworn himself to the service of some tyrant of a castle or a town.”



• The land which they passed through was fair, both of tillage and pasture, with much cattle therein. Everywhere they saw men and women working afield, but no houses of worthy yeomen or vavassors, or cots of good husbandmen. Here and there was a castle or strong-house, and here and there long rows of ugly hovels, or whiles houses, big tall and long, but exceeding foul and ill-favoured, such as Ralph had not yet seen the like of. And when he asked of Clement concerning all this, he said: “It is as I have told thee, that here be no freemen who work afield, nay, nor villeins either. All those whom ye have seen working have been bought and sold like to those whom we saw standing on the Stone in the market of Cheaping Knowe, or else were born of such cattle, and each one of them can be bought and sold again, and they work not save under the whip. And as for those hovels and the long and foul houses, they are the stables wherein this kind of cattle is harboured.”



• Again said Clement that though the tillers and toilers of Goldburg were not for the most part mere thralls and chattels, as in the lands beyond the mountains behind them, yet were they little more thriving for that cause; whereas they belonged not to a master, who must at worst feed them, and to no manor, whose acres they might till for their livelihood, and on whose pastures they might feed their cattle; nor had they any to help or sustain them against the oppressor and the violent man; so that they toiled and swinked and died with none heeding them, save they that had the work of their hands good cheap; and they forsooth heeded them less than their draught beasts whom they must needs buy with money, and whose bellies they must needs fill; whereas these poor wretches were slaves without a price, and if one died another took his place on the chance that thereby he might escape present death by hunger, for there was a great many of them.