In message <000e01c40e75$886ca300$ba186b51@u7j1m5>, Jackie Watts <j.watts510@ntlworld.com> writes >> Didn't the yeomen hold their land by rights of military service owed to >the >> lord of the manor who, in his turn, owed military services to the crown? > >Hi all, > >This is my first posting on this list. > >As I understand it, a yeoman was, in early times, "a servant or attendant in >a noble house, ranked as something between a sergeant and a groom, or >between a squire and a page" which ceased to be the definition after c 1500 > From the Oxford dictionary of English >surnames. > >In later years many farmers called themselves yeoman on census returns no - it meant something specific, as described elsewhere, and an enumerator would have been likely to pick on anyone calling himself out of his social level. Yeomen could certainly be landlords (as indeed could some relatively small farmers, by accident of inheritance) -- Eve McLaughlin Author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians Secretary Bucks Genealogical Society