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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 1996-02 > 0823440509


From: <>
Subject: Re: yeoman
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 08:28:29 -0500


>
> RE: YEOMAN
>
> Newsgroups: soc.genealogy.medieval
> Post a followup article to newsgroup(s)
> From: (Scott C. Silvers)
> Send e-mail reply to: Scott C. Silvers
> Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 23:57:13 GMT
> Organization: Washington & Lee University
>
>Richard Barney () wrote:
>: back in England in the sixteen hundreds, just what did the term"yeoman"
>: mean.....I understand it was sometimes given to third or fourth sons of
>: a lord or Knight. How was he less...and how was he more than the run of
>: the mill. And, is he entitled to use the ESQ after his name?
>
> If I remember correctly, the word yeoman is a shortened version
>of "young man" (sort of like Good-Bye for "God be with you")
>

WEBSTER'S NEW TWENTIETH CENTURY DICTIONARY (Unabridged) pub.
1956 by The World Publishing Company, Cleveland and New York,
p. 2119:

yeoman,

1. a man possessed of small estate in land; a gentleman farmer;
a freeholder of a class below the gentry, who worked his own
land. [Obs.]

2. an attendant or manservant in a royal or noble household.
[Obs]

3. an assistant or subordinant, as to a sheriff. [Obs.]

4. one not advanced to the fank of gengleman. [Obs.]

(ommitting a few non obsolete)

yeoman of the (royal) guard; any of the 100 men forming a
ceremonial guard for the English royal family: the guard was
instituted in 1485 by Henry VII and still wears a traditional
fifteenth-century uniform.

Barb

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