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VILLENAGE (VILLAINAGE, VILLANAGE, VIL...
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See also:VILLENAGE (VILLAINAGE, VILLANAGE, VILLEINAGE) , a See also:medieval See also:term (from See also:villa, villanus), pointing to See also:serfdom, a See also:condition of men intermediate between freedom and See also:slavery. It occurs in See also:France as well as in See also:England, and was certainly imported into See also:English speech through the See also:medium of See also:Norman See also:French. The earliest instances of its use are to be found in the Latin and French versions of English documents in the xxth and 12th centuries (cf. Domesday See also:Book; See also:Liebermann, Glossary to the Gesetze der Angelsachsen, s.v. villanus, vilain). The See also:history of the word and of the condition is especially instructive in English usage. The materials for the formation of the villein class were already in existence in the Anglo-Saxon See also:period. On the one See also:hand, the Saxon ceorls (twihyndemen), although considered as including the typical freemen in the earlier See also:laws (IEthelberht, See also:Hlothhere and See also:Edric, See also:Ine), gradually became differentiated through the See also:action of See also:political and economic causes, and many of them had to recognize the patronage of magnates or to seek livelihood as tenants on the estates of the latter. These ceorls, sitting on gafol-See also:land, were, though personally See also:free, considered as a See also:lower See also:order of men, and lapsed gradually into more or less oppressive subjection in respect of the See also:great landowners. It is characteristic in this connexion that the See also:West Saxon laws do not make any distinction between ceorls and laets or See also:half-freemen as the Kentish laws had done: this means that the half-free See also:people were, if not Welshmen, reckoned as ,members of the ceorl class. Another remarkable indication of the decay of the ceorl's See also:estate is afforded by the fact that in the See also:treaties with the Danes the twihynde ceorls are equated with the Danish leysings or freedmen. It does not mean, of course, that their condition was practically the same, but in any See also:case the fact testifies to the gulf which had come to See also:separate the two See also:principal subdivisions of the free class—the ceorl and the thane. The Latin version of the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, a document compiled probably in the 11th See also:century, not See also:long before the See also:Conquest, renders geneat (a See also:peasant See also:tenant of a See also:superior See also:kind performing lighter services than the gebur, as he was burdened with heavy See also:week-See also:work) by villanus; but the gebur came to be also considered as a villanus according to Anglo-Norman terminology. The See also:group designated as geburs in Anglo-Saxon charters, though distinguished from See also:mere slaves (lheow baerde-burbaerde, See also:Kemble, See also:Cod. Dipl. 1079), undoubtedly included many freedmen who in point of services and economic subjection were not very much above the slaves. Both ceorls and geburs disappear as separate classes, and it is clear that the greater See also:part of them must have passed into the See also:rank of villeins. In the terminology of the Domesday See also:Inquest we find the villeins as the most numerous See also:element of the English See also:population. Out of about 240,000 households enumerated in Domes-See also:day See also:ioo,000 are marked as belonging to villeins. They are rustics performing, as a See also:rule, work services for their lords. But not all the inhabitants of the villages were designated by that name. Villeins are opposed to socmen and freemen on one hand, to bordarii, cottagers and slaves on the other. The distinction in regard to the first two of these See also:groups was evidently derived from their greater freedom, although the difference is only one in degree and not in kind. In fact, the villein is assumed to be a See also:person free by See also:birth, but holding land of which he cannot dispose freely. The distinction as against bordarii and cottagers is based on the See also:size of the holding: the villeins are holders of See also:regular shares in the See also:village—that is, of thevirgates, bovates or half-hides which constitute the principal subdivisions in the See also:fields and contribute to See also:form the ploughteams—whereas the bordarii hold smaller plots of some 5 acres, more or less, and cotkarii are connected with mere cottages and crofts. Thus the terminology of Domesday takes See also:note of two kinds of See also:differences in the status of rustics: a legal one in connexion with the right to dispose of See also:property in land, and an economic one reflecting the opposition between the holders of shares in the fields and the holders of See also:auxiliary tenements. The feature of See also:personal serfdom is also noticeable, but it provides a basis only for the comparatively small group of servi, of whom only about 25,000 are enumerated in Domesday Book. The contrast between this exceptionally situated class and the See also:rest of the population shows that personal slavery was rapidly disappearing in England about the See also:time of the Conquest. It is also to be noticed that the Domesday Survey constantly mentions the terra villanorum as opposed to the See also:demesne in the estates or manors of the time, and that the land of the rustics is taxed separately for the geld, so that the distinction between the property of the See also:lord and that of the peasant dependent on him is clearly marked and by no means devoid of See also:practical importance. The Domesday Survey puts before us the See also:state of things in England as it was at the very beginning of the Norman and at the See also:close of the Saxon period. The development of feudal society, of centralizing kingship and ultimately. of a See also:system of See also:common See also:law, brought about great changes which all See also:hinge on the fundamental fact that the See also:kings, while increasing the See also:power of the state in other respects, surrendered it completely as regards the relations between the peasants and their lords. The See also:protection of the assizes was tendered in See also:civil matters to free tenants and refused to villeins. The royal courts refused to entertain suits of villeins against their lords, although there was a See also:good See also:deal of vacillation before this position was definitely taken up. See also:Bracton still speaks in his See also:treatise of the possibility for the courts to interfere against intolerable See also:cruelty on the part of the lord involving the destruction of the villein's waynage, that is, of his ploughteam, and in the Notebook of Bracton there are a couple of cases which prove that 13th-century See also:judges occasionally allowed themselves to entertain actions by persons holding in villenage against their lords. Gradually, however, the exception of villenage became firmly settled. As the See also:historical and practical position was developing on these lines the lawyers who fashioned English common law in the 12th and 13th centuries did not hesitate to apply to it the teaching of See also:Roman law on slavery. Bracton fits his See also:definition of villenage into the Romanesque See also:scheme of See also:Azo's Summa of the Institutes, and the judges of the royal courts made sweeping inferences from this See also:general position. To begin with, the relation between the villein and his lord was regarded as a personal and not a praedial one. Everyone See also:born of villein stock belonged to his See also:master and was See also:bound to undertake any service which might be imposed on him by the master's or the steward's command. The distinction between villeins in See also:gross and villeins regardant, of which much is made by See also:modern writers, was suggested by modes of See also:pleading and does not make its See also:appearance in the See also:Year-Books before the 15th century. Secondly, all See also:independent proprietary rights were denied to the villein as against his lord, and the legal rule " quicquid servo acquiritur domino acquiritur " was extended to villeins. The fact that a great number of these See also:serfs had been enjoying protection as free ceorls in former ages made itself See also:felt, however, in three directions. (I) In criminal matters the villein was treated by the See also: Technically this right was limited to the inhabitants of manors entered in the Domesday Survey as terra regis of See also:Edward the See also:Confessor. On the other hand the See also:doctrine became effective if the manors in question had been granted by later kings to subjects, because-if they remained in the hand of the king the only remedy against See also:ejectment and exaction See also:lay in petitioning for redress without any definite right to the latter. If, however, the two conditions mentioned were forthcoming, villeins, or, as they were technically called, villein socmen of ancient demesne manors, could resist any See also:attempt of their lords to encroach on their rights by depriving them of their holdings or increasing the amount of their customary services. Their remedy was to apply for a little See also:writ of right in the first case and for a writ of monstraverunt in the second. These writs entitled them to appear as plaintiffs against the lord in his own manorial court and, eventually, to have the question at issue examined by way of See also:appeal, on a writ of See also:error, or by See also:reservation on some legal points in the upper courts of the king. A number of cases arising from these privileges of the men of ancient demesne are published in the Notebook of Bracton and in the Abbreviatio placitorum. This exceptional See also:procedure does not simply go back to the rule that persons who had been tenants of the king ought not to have their condition altered for the worse in See also:con-sequence of a royal See also: There was a tendency to apply the rule that a See also:bastard follows the See also:mother, especially in the case of a servile mother. In the case of mixed marriages, the condition of the See also:child is determined by the free or villein condition of the See also:tenement in which it was born. This notion of the See also:influence of the tenement is well adapted to feudal notions and makes itself felt again in the case of the pursuit of a fugitive villein. He can be seized without further formalities if he is caught in his " See also:nest," that is, in his native place. If not, the lord can follow him in fresh pursuit for four days; once these days past, the fugitive is maintained provisionally in See also:possession of his See also:liberty, and the lord has to bring an action de nativo habendo and has to assume the See also:burden of See also:proof. So much as to the proof of villenage by birth or previous condition. But there were See also:numbers of cases when the discussion as to servile status turned not on these formal points but on an examination of the services performed by the person claimed as a villein or challenged as holding in villenage. In both cases the courts had often recourse to proof derived not from See also:direct testimony but from indirect indications as to the kind of services that had been performed by the supposed villein. Certain services, especially the See also:payment of merchetthe See also:fine for marrying a daughter—were considered to be the badge of serfdom. Another service, the performance of which established a presumption as to villenage, was compulsory service as a See also:reeve. The courts also tried to draw a distinction from the amount and regularity of agricultural services to which a tenant was subjected. Bracton speaks of the contrast between the irregular services of a serf, " who could not know in the evening what he would have to do in the See also:morning," and services agreed upon and definite in their amount. The customary arrangements of the work of villeins, however, render this contrast rather fictitious. The obligations of down-right villeins became to that degree settled and regular that one of the See also:ordinary designations of the class was custumarii. Therefore in most cases there were no arbitrary exactions to go by, except perhaps one or the other See also:tallage imposed at the will of the lord. The See also:original distinction seems to have been made not between arbitrary and agreed but between occasional services and regular agricultural week-work. While the occasional services, even when agricultural, in no way established a presumption of villenage, and many socmen, freemen and holders by See also:serjeanty submitted to them, agricultural week-work was primarily considered as a trait of villenage and must have played an important part in the See also:process of See also:classification of See also:early Norman society. The villein was in this sense emphatically the man holding " by the See also:fork and the See also:flail." This point brings us to consider the See also:matter-of-fact conditions of the villeins during the feudal period, especially in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. As is shown by the See also:Hundred Rolls, the Domesday of St See also:Paul, the Surveys of St See also:Peter, Glouc., See also:Glastonbury See also:Abbey, See also:Ramsey Abbey and countless other records of the same kind, the customary conditions of villenage did not See also:tally by any means with the See also:identification between villenage and slavery suggested by the jurists. It is true that in nomenclature the word " servi " is not infrequently used (e.g. in the Hundred Rolls) where See also:villani might have been mentioned, and the feminine nief (nativa) appears as the regular parallel of villanus, but in the descriptions of usages and services we find that the power of the lord loses its discretionary See also:character and is in every respect moderated by See also:custom. As personal dependents of the lord native villeins were liable to he sold, and we find actual sales recorded: Glastonbury Abbey e.g. sells a certain Philipp See also:Hardyng for 20 shillings. But such transfers of human chattels occur seldom, and there is nothing during the English feudal period corresponding to the brisk See also:trade in men characteristic of the ancient See also:world. Merchet was regarded, as has been stated already, as a badge of serfdom in so far as it was said to imply a " buying of one's own See also:blood " (servos de sanguine suo emando). The explanation is even more characteristic than the custom itself, because fines on See also:marriage may be levied and were actually levied from people of different condition, from the free as well as from the serf. Still the tendency to treat mere/set as a distinctive feature of serfdom has to be noted, and we find that the custom spread for this very reason in consequence of the encroachments of powerful lords: in the Hundred Rolls it is applied indiscriminately to the whole rustic population of certain hundreds in a way which can hardly be explained unless by artificial See also:extension. See also:Heriot, the surrender of the best See also:horse or ox, is also considered as the common incident of villein tenure, although, of course, its very name proves its intimate connexion with the outfit of soldiers (here-geatu). Economically the institution of villenage was bound ap with the manorial organization—that is, with the fact that the See also:country was divided into a number of districts in which central See also:home farms were cultivated by the help of work supplied by villein households. The most important of villein services is the week-work per-formed by the peasantry. Every virgater or holder of a bovate has to send a labourer to do work on the lord's See also:farm for some days in the week. Three days is indeed the most common See also:standard for service of this kind, though four or even five occur sometimes; as well as two. It must be See also:borne in mind in the case of heavy charges, such as four or five days' week-work, that only one labourer from the whole holding is meant, while generally there were several men living on every holding—otherwise the service of five days would be impossible to perform. In the course of these three days, or whatever the number was, many requirements of the demesne had to be met. The principal of these was ploughing the fields belonging to the lord, and for such ploughing the peasant had not only to appear personally as a labourer, but to bring his oxen and plough, or rather to join with his oxen and plough in the work imposed on the village: the heavy, costly plough with a team of eight oxen had to be made up by several peasants contributing their beasts and implements towards its See also:composition. In the same way the villagers had to go through the work of harrowing with their harrows, and of removing the See also:harvest in their vans and carts. See also:Carriage duties in carts and on horseback were also apportioned according to the time they took as a part of the week-work. Then came innumerable varieties of See also:manual work for the erection and keeping up of hedges, the preservation of dykes, canals and ditches, the threshing and garnering of See also:corn, the tending and shearing of See also:sheep and so forth. All this hand-work was reckoned according to customary See also:standards as day-work and week-work. But besides all these services into which the regular week-work of the peasantry was differentiated, stood some additional duties. The ploughing for the lord, for instance, was not only imposed in the shape of a certain number of days in the week, but took sometimes the shape of a certain number of acres which the village had to plough and to sow for the lord irrespectively of the time employed on it. This was sometimes termed gafolearth. Exceedingly burdensome services were required in the seasons when farming processes are, as it were, at their height—in the seasons of mowing and See also:reaping, when every day is of See also:special value and the working power of the farm hands is strained to the utmost. At that time it was the custom to call up the whole able-bodied population of the See also:manor, with the exception of the housewives for two, three or more days of mowing and reaping on the lord's fields; to these boon-See also:works the peasantry was asked or invited by special See also:summons, and their value was so far appreciated that the villagers were usually treated ha meals in cases where they were again and again called off from their own fields to the demesne. The liberality of the lord actually went so far, in exceptionally hard straits, that some See also:ale was served to the labourers to keep them in good See also:humour. In the 14th century this social arrangement, based primarily on natural See also:economy and on the feudal disruption of society, began to give way. The See also:gradual spread of intercourse rendered unnecessary the natural husbandry of former times' which sought to produce a See also:complete set of goods in every separate locality. Instead of acting as a little world by itself for the raising of corn, the breeding of See also:cattle, the gathering of See also:wool, the See also:weaving of See also:linen and common cloths, the fabrication of necessary implements of all kinds, the See also:local group began to buy some of these goods and to sell some others, renouncing See also:isolation and making its destiny dependent on commercial intercourse. Instead of requiring from its population all kinds of work and reducing its ordinary occupations to a hard-and-fast routine See also:meeting in a slow and unskilled manner all possible contingencies, the local group began to move, to call in workmen from abroad for tasks of a special nature, and to send its own workmen to look out for profitable employment in other places. Instead of managing the land by the See also:constant repetition of the sameprocesses, by a customary immobility of tenure and service, by communalistic restrictions on private enterprise and will, local society began to try improvements, to See also:escape from the See also:bounds of See also:champion farming. Instead of producing and See also:collecting goods for immediate See also:consumption, local society came more and more into the See also:habit of exchanging corn, cattle, See also:cloth, for See also:money, and of laying money by as a means of getting all sorts of exchangeable goods, when required. In a word, the time of commercial, contractual, See also:cash intercourse was coming fast. What was exceptional and subsidiary in feudal times came to obtain general recognition in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, and, for this very reason, assumed a very different aspect. A similar transformation took place in regard to See also:government. The local See also:monarchy of the manorial lords was fast giving way to a central power which maintained its laws, the circuits of its judges, the fiscal claims of its See also:exchequer, the police interference of its civil See also:officers all through the country, and, by prevailing over the franchises of manorial lords, gave shape to a vast dominion of legal equality and legal protection, in which the forces of commercial See also:exchange, of See also:contract, of social intercourse, found a ready and welcome See also:sphere of action. In truth both processes, the economic and the political one, worked so much together that it is hardly possible to say which influenced the other more, which was the cause and which the effect. Government See also:grew strong because it could draw on a society which was going ahead in enterprise and well-being; social intercourse progressed because it could depend on a strong government to safeguard it. If we now turn to the actual stages by which this momentous passage from the manorial to the commercial arrangement was achieved, we have to See also:notice first of all a rapid development of contractual relations. We know that in feudal law there ran a standing contrast between tenure by custom—villein tenure—and tenure by contract—free tenure. While the manorial system was in full force this contrast led to a classification of holdings and affected the whole position of people on the land. Still, even at that time it might happen that a freeholder owned some land in villenage by the See also:side of his free tenement, and that a villein held some land freely by agreement with his lord or with a third person. But these cases, though by no means infrequent, were still. exceptional. As a rule people used land as holdings, and those were rigidly classified as villein or free tenements. The interesting point to be noticed is that, without any formal break, leasing land for life and for term of years is seen to be rapidly spreading from the end of the 13th century, and numberless small tenancies are created in the 14th century which break up the disposition of the holdings. From the close of the 13th century downwards countless transactions on the basis of leases for terms of years occur between the peasants themselves, any ,suit-ably kept set of 14th-century court rolls containing entries in which such and such a villein is said to appear in the halimote and to surrender for the use of another person named a piece of land belonging to the holding. The number of years and the conditions of payment are specified. Thus; behind the See also:screen of the normal shares a number of small tenancies arise which run their economic concerns independently from the cumbersome arrangements of tenure and service; and, needless to adds. all these tenancies are burdened with money rents. Another See also:series of momentous changes took place in the arrangement of services. Even the manorial system admitted the buying off for money of particular dues in kind and of specific performance of work. A villein might be allowed to bring a See also:penny instead of bringing a chicken or to pay a See also:rent instead of appearing with his oxen three times a week on the lord's fields. Such rents were called mal or See also:mail in contrast with the gafol, ancient rents which had been imposed rodes pendently, apart from any buying off of customary services. There were even whole bodies of peasants called Molmen, because they had bought off work from the lord by settling with hills on the basis of money rents. As time went on these practices of See also:commutation became more and more frequent. There were, for both sides, many advantages in arranging their mutual relations on this basis. The lord, mstead of clumsy work, got clear money, a much-coveted means of satisfying needs and wishes of any kind—instead of cumbrous performances which did not come always at the proper moment, were carried out in a half-hearted manner, yielded no immediate results, and did not admit of convenient rearrangement. The peasant got rid of a hateful drudgery which not only took up his time and means in an unprofitable manner, but placed him under the rough See also:control and the arbitrary discipline of stewards or See also:reeves and gave occasion to all sorts of fines and extortions. With the growth of intercourse and See also:security money became more frequent and the number of such transactions increased in proportion. But it must be kept in mind that the con-version of services into rents went on very gradually, as a series of private agreements, and that it would be very wrong to suppose, as some scholars have done, that it had led to a general commutation by the See also:middle or even the end of the 14th century. The 14th century was marked by violent fluctuations in the demand and See also:supply of labour, and particularly the tremendous loss in population occasioned in the middle of this century by the See also:Black See also:Death called forth a most serious crisis. No wonder that many lords clung very tenaciously to customary services, and ecclesiastical institutions seem to have been especially backward in going over to the system of money rents. There is See also:evidence to show, for instance, that the manors of the abbey of Ramsey were managed on the system of enforced labour right down to the middle of the 15th century, and, of course, survivals of these customs in the shape of scattered services lived on much longer. A second See also:drawback from the point of view of the landlords was called forth by the fact that commutation for fixed rents gradually lessened the value of the exactions to which they were entitled. Money not only became less scarce but it became cheaper, so that the couple of pence for which a day of manual work was bought off in the beginning of the 13th century did not fetch more than half of their former value at its end. As quit rents were customary and not See also:rack rents, the successors of those who had redeemed their services were gaining the whole surplus in the value of goods and labour as against money, while the successors of those who had commuted their right to claim services for certain sums in money lost all the corresponding difference. These inevitable consequences came to be perceived in course of time and occasioned a backward tendency towards services in kind which could not prevail against the general See also:movement from natural economy to money dealings, but was strong enough to produce social See also:friction and See also:grave disturbances. The economic crisis of the 14th century has its See also:complement in the legal crisis of the 5th. At that time the courts of law begin to do away with the denial of protection to villeins which, as we have seen, constituted the legal basis of villenage. This is effected by the recognition of See also:copyhold tenure (see COPYHOLD). It is a fact of first-See also:rate magnitude that in the 15th century customary relations on one hand, the power of government on the other, ripened, as it were, to that extent that the judges of the king began to take See also:cognizance of the relations of the peasants to their lords. The first cases which occur in this sense are still treated not as a matter of common law, but as a manifestation of See also:equity. As doubtful questions of See also:trust, of wardship, of testamentary See also:succession, they were taken up not in the strict course of See also:justice, but as matters in which redress was sorely needed and had to be brought by the exceptional power of the court of See also:chancery. But this interference of 15th-century chancellors paved the way towards one of the greatest revolutions in the law; without formally enfranchising villeins and villein tenure they created a legal basis for it in the law of the See also:realm: in the See also:formula of copyhold—tenement held at the will of the lord and by the custom of the manor—the first part lost its significance and the second prevailed, in down-right contrast with former times when, on the contrary, the second part had no legal value and the first expressed the viewof the courts. One may almost be tempted to say that these obscure decisions rendered unnecessary in England the work achieved with such a flourish of trumpets in France by the emancipating See also:decree of the 4th of See also:August 1789. The personal condition of villenage did not, however, disappear at once with the rise of copyhold. It lingered through the 16th century and appears exceptionally even in the 17th. Deeds of emancipation and payments for personal enfranchisement are often noticed at that very time. But these are only survivals of an arrangement which has been destroyed in its essence by a complete See also:change of economic and political conditions. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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