You gave their farms as fiefs to (your) entourage and servants and to sluggards.
I do not think that this is a case which will cause the sluggard blood to flame.
That means to say that the enterprising, go-ahead firm which increases efficiency and turnover is penalised, while the sluggard, who holds back, scores.
That meant that vigorous, enterprising firms were penalised whereas sluggards snapped up all the raw materials they could get because they knew that there might be a shortage.
It is so unfair to the toiler, it gives the sluggard and the drone a reward ten thousand times greater than any merit he may possess.
By extension, the phrase has come to mean the ground or tenement of a sluggard, or of one who is easily taken advantage of.
By his own industry he shamed sluggards.
A pollard simply meant someone or something that had been polled (similarly to the formation of drunkard and sluggard); for example, a hornless ox or polled livestock.
