James Buchan Quotes

The Normans came over, lance in hand, burning and trampling down every thing before them, and cutting off the Saxon dynasty and the Saxon nobles at the edge of the sword; but the right of petition remained untouched.

At the Norman Invasion, the Saxon thanes were themselves humbled in turn; the manors were given a more legal character and transferred to favourites of William the Conqueror.

The crusades made great improvement in the condition of the serfs.

it would be impossible to liberate the serf otherwise than by endowing him with land.

The ferocious inroads of the Normans scared many weak and timid persons into servitude.

The other classes of which society was composed were, first, freemen, owners of small portions of land, independent, though they sometimes voluntarily became the vassals of their more opulent neighbors, whose power was necessary for their protection.

They say that it were great reproof to the king to take again what he has given, so that they will not suffer him to have his own good, nor land, nor forfeiture, nor any other good but they ask it from him, or else they take bribes of others to get it for him.

The medieval hall house was very primitive when it became the characteristic form of dwelling of the landowner of the Middle Ages.

In the tenth century the old Batavian and later Roman forms have faded away.

I'd like to do a story about the medieval ages where in every scene you'd sort of feel that you were in the 12th century. That would be great to get that feeling.

I can find my way from 500 A.D. through to 1066 pretty well as an amateur historian.

We think of medieval England as being a place of unbelievable cruelty and darkness and superstition. We think of it as all being about fair maidens in castles, and witch-burning, and a belief that the world was flat. Yet all these things are wrong.

In the ancient world, taxes were paid in kind: landowners paid in crops or livestock; the landless paid with their labor. Taxing trade made medieval monarchs rich and funded the early-modern state.

In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords … to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth … declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war.

Joseph made it a law over the land of Egypt unto this day, that Pharaoh should have the fifth part.

That system, unequal as it is indefensible, is the mightiest engine of oppression imposed upon an honest yeomanry since the feudal ages. This system places a high premium on wealth and a severe penalty on poverty.

William the Conqueror had so great an abhorrence of the English language, that he commanded all the laws and law-proceedings to be in French; and even the children in school were taught the first elements of grammar and letters in French and not in English.

So fiercely has the course of modern legislation turned against landowners as to render it merely a question of time, and no long time, when they … shall be broken up. The squirearchy have had long innings; may the new order that is to replace it make our country better for all sorts and conditions of men.

The serfs of princes, nobles, ministerials, and churches shall no be admitted to our cities

Before the time of the conquest, the Irish people knew nothing of absolute property in land. The land belonged to the entire sept; the chief was Little more than the managing member of the association. The feudal idea which came in with the conquest was associated with foreign dominion, and has never to this day been recognized by the moral sentiment of the people

The stability of medieval society depended on the fixity of all of its parts, as that of modern society is on their mobility.

For a very long time, and among a large number of peoples, political power has belonged to the owners of the land

… the keenest observer of William the Conqueror's Norman robbers and Saxon swineherds would have failed to foretell the great dominant race which has come from them by free growth and good culture.

Only those who till the king’s land have to pay a tax on the profits they make. Those who want to go away may go.... The king and his administration uses no corporal punishment; criminals are merely fined according to the gravity of their offense.

I'm really enamored with the idea of a reformed society, and I've always been fascinated with the Dark Ages as well as the power vacuum that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.