#yeomen

Kind of, yes.

I've discussed this earlier, but "alloidal title" wasn't really a thing in medieval societies, thanks to the legal doctrine of "nulle terre sans seigneur." (No land without a lord.) Thus, the overwhelming majority of land tenures were various forms of leases or use-rights.

So yes, commoners could have extensive landholdings, whether they be rural yeomen or urban burghers, but they tended to be in the form of long, long-term leases rather than what we would consider to be ownership today.

So for example, when Thomas Cromwell was making his dizzying run up the social ladder in the 1530s, he mostly did it by snapping up hundred year leases to valuable properties in town and country, and only started acquiring formal titles when he made it into the aristocracy.

Boulders huge and dales encumber Where, in necromantic slumber Arthur lies with all his peers Through the long, long days of summer, Through the long, long nights of winter, Through the hundred, hundred years.

Gray is all the vale untrodden, Cloud and crag are gray and hodden, Gray the earth whence nothing grows; Gray the hue of hills and rocks is; Nothing red is there but foxes, Nothing black is there but crows.

Deep the cavern: Twelvescore bowmen, Fivescore knights with tenscore yeomen Sleeping, hedge their sleeping lord, Who reposes, silken-vested, Golden-bearded, massy-chested, Strong and silent as his sword.

Aye, the sword; what arm may guide it! There it hangs, a horn beside it, Near the cavern's outer bounds Where in dreams of greenwood chases, Clean-limbed, sprawl in fancied races Fourteen packs of coupled hounds.

When the world is old and weary, Loveless, lawless, mirthless, dreary, Racked with doubt, by discord torn, One shall come, in youth immortal, Who shall cross the gloomy portal, Draw the sword and blow the horn.

Broke shall be the spell; up-leaping Hounds, fullcry, shall rouse the sleeping; Steed shall neigh and steel shall ring; Forth shall ride the doughty fighters, Hate-subduers, evil-righters, Knights and yeomen round their king.

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Legend

Arthur Guiterman  1871-1943

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