Villein

The villeins are a composite and of those free yet dependent cultivators of the soil whose tenure was defined by the Norman lawyers to be unfree. These diverse classes were thrown together by the Norman and Angevin lawyers ^nd classed as villeins; and under the influence of conceptions borrowed from Roman law many of the rules and maxims of the Roman conception of slavery were applied to them. Their lord has absolute power over their bodies and their goods. He can sell them and treat them as he pleases; for they are his chattels. They are all equally things — “there are no degrees of personal unfreedom.” Subsequently the general theory of the law was modified in every direction, and the status of the villein became one of the greatest curiosities of the mediaeval common law. The villein held a plot of land and made a living out of it; while the lord might change his tenement, it appears that sales of villeins were infrequent. There came to be a great gulf between the villein and the slave. While the lord might imprison and beat his villein, the criminal law protected him against grosser forms of violence. While he was, as against his lord, rightless, or nearly so, as against the rest of the world he was regarded as free. It was purely a relation of a person to his lord. It came to be a very relative kind of predial serfdom, tempered by custom of the manor and by communal life. In the last phase, the chief profit to be made from villeins is from manumissions. At the end of the sixteenth century, both villein tenure and villein status were obsolete. 3 Holdsw. Hist. E. L. 370-395. See also A. M. Eaton in 1902 Rept. Am. Bar Assoc. 299. See Serf. VILLEIN SOCAGE (Sax. soc, free, or Lat. soca, a plough). The villeins, from living on one piece of land, came at last to be allowed to hold it by tenure of villeinage, e. g. uncertain menial services. These services at last became fixed; the tenure was then called villein socage. 1 Washb. R. P. 20.

A person attached to a manor, who was substantially in the condition of a slave, who performed the base and servile work upon the manor for the lord, and was, in most respecte, a subject of property and belonging to him. 1 Washb. Real Prop. 26

— Villein in gross. A villein who was annexed to the person of the lord, and transferable by deed from one owner to another. 2 Bl. Comm. 93.

— Villein regardant. A villein annexed to the manor of land ; a serf.
—-Villein services. Base services, such as villeins performed. 2 Bl. Comm. 93. They were not, however, exclusively confined to villeins, since they might be performed by freemen, without impairing their free condition. Bract, fol 24b.

— Villein socage. In feudal and old English law. A species of tenure in which the services to be rendered were certain and determinate, but were of a base or servile nafure; i. not suitable to a man of free and honorable ranlL This was also called "privileged villeinage," to distingulah it from "pure villeinage," m which the services were not certain, but the tenant was obliged to do whatever he was coats manded. 2 Bl. Comm. 61.

villcine, villeyn, villain, vlleyn, old English law. A feudal tenant of base and uncertain services, of the most a live distress. old debts. / inspection; inspection, or excourse of an action. Prosground, which another may derived from the civil law. pledge: the office of the sheriff was in some frank pledge, or leet appointed under writs of view, snbreninnt, I The laws renot those who sleep [upon a citation by which actions begun, served by posting up in or township; a parish or part sense, a manor; later, any country residence; a manor; a consisting of more than two; a mansionibus ricinata, et colappellatione Tillarum continena collection of several neighneighbors; and under the comprehended boroughs and residence. ' country residence. law. Villein service. bondman; an agricultural bondsalvo wainagio sno: the wainage [i. e. his implements of; an inhabitant of a town, a town. vyleyn, I fr. and eng. In the lowast class, who held by sordid kind; an agricultural transferable by deed from one owner to another. Villein regardant: a villein annexed to the lord's manor, or land. Villein services: base seryices such as villeins performed. Villein socagre: a privileged kind of villeinage, the tenants doing villein services, but of a certain and determinate kind.

A feudal tenant of the lowest class; at first a simple bondman; afterwards holding land by base and uncertain services. Villein socage: tenure in villeinage, but by certain services; v. Tenure. Villein in gross: a bondman, annexed to the lord's person, and freely transferable; villein regsirdant, a vi Uein annexed to the manor, transferable only with the land.

or VILLAIN. The name of a servile class, under Saxon institutions. Villeinage, or villenage: the state or condition of a villein; also, the tenure by which villeins held their lands. The villeins were a sort of people under the Saxon government in a condition of downright servitude, who were used and employed in the most servile works, and are even said to have belonged to the lord of the soil, like the cattle or stock upon it. they were removable at the lord's pleastu-e. Brown. There were two sorts of villeins in England. The one was termed a villein m gross, who was immediately bound to the person of the lord and his heirs, and transferable by deed from one owner to another. The other was a villein regardant to a manor, as being a member belonging and annexed to a manor, and bound to the lord thereof. Modey Sf W. Of tenure in villeinage there were two sorts: pure, where a man held upon terms of doing whatsoever was commanded of him; and primhged, otherwise called villein socage. Whar Um. Vi Uein socage. That species of ancient English tenure in which land was held upon services servile or villein in their nature, but of which the quantity which might be exacted had been made certain. This being preferable to a tenure upon condition of doing whatever might be required, was also called privileged villeinage. Compare Socage.

Engl. law, was a species of slave during the feudal times. The feudal villein of the lowest order was unprotected as to property, and subjected to the most ignoble services; but his circumstances were very different from the villein, except as to his master; in relation to all other persons he was a freeman. Litt. Ten. s. 189, 190; Hallam’s View of the Middle Ages, vol. i. 122, 124; vol. i. 199.