Note 15 — DOCUMENTS (continued 2)

"The holy fathers, monks and friars, had in their confessions and specially in their extreme and deadly sickness, convinced the laity how dangerous a practice it was, for one Christian man to hold another in bondage; so that temporal men by little and little, by reason of that terror in their consciences, were glad to manumit all their villeins."—Sir T. Smith His. Common, vide 2. Blackstone, p. 96.