The various spellings gradually altered because of association with such common English placename suffixes such as '-combe' and '-ham'. According to the land tenure charter of England, a freemen had to pay a Quit-rent (in effect, a kind of land tax) in exchange for freedom from all other feudal obligations. Currently only 1/3 of an acre is required. They derived from the Old French feudal term franchomme composed of the elements 'franc' (in its original meaning 'free') and 'homme', man, from the Latin ' homo'. During the middle ages, a human needed around 2 acres of land per year in order to survive. They developed in the Middle Ages as a status surname, indicating a 'free man'. Several English surnames are thought to derive from this class of people. Unlike some other terms referring to social class or status in medieval England such as esquire and gentleman, franklin has no modern usage other than as a historical reference to the Middle Ages. While not precisely identical to the English class, the Norwegian equivalent was also a class of landowners, often enjoying substantial properties and prestige, but no title of any kind. The English translation of Sigrid Undset's The Master of Hestviken tetralogy, about medieval Norway, names the books' protagonist "a franklin".Georgette Heyer uses the term in her novel The Conqueror (1931), which is set in 11th-century Falaise, Normandy.Cedric of Rotherwood, a character in the historical novel Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, is a franklin.A franklin is one of the characters in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice." Appearance in literature Except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land. Nor will we proceed with force against him.
"No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Magna Carta gave rights to free men and the peasantry. The mainland European bourgeoisie, a social class whose name means "town-dwellers". This is one factor distinguishing this class from Note that the land and property owned by this English middle class might well be in a rural area.
The social class of franklin, meaning (latterly) a person not only free (not in feudal servitude) but also owning the freehold of land, and yet barely even a member of the " landed gentry" ( knights, esquires and gentlemen, the lower grades of the upper class), let alone of the nobility ( barons, viscounts, earls/ counts, marquis, dukes), evidently represents the beginnings of a real-property-owning middle class in England during the 14th and 15th centuries. All these go back to Late Latin francus "free" or "a free man", from Frankish * Frank, "a freeman", literally, "a Frank" cognate with Old High German Franko. Collins mentions the Anglo-French fraunclein, "a landowner of free, but not noble birth", from Old French franc free + -lein, "-ling", formed on the model of " chamberlain". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "franklin" is derived from Middle English: franklen, frankeleyn, francoleyn, fromĪnglo-Latin francalanus a person owning francalia, "territory held without dues".