Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History

Prior of the Hospitalers v. Thomas Barentyn and Ralph Crips.

Another case seems even more interesting. It dates from 1355, that is from a time when the usual terminology had already become fixed. It arose under that celebrated Statute of Labourers which played such a prominent part in the social history of the fourteenth century. One of the difficulties in working the statute came from the fact that it had to recognise two different sets of relations between the employer and the workman. The statute dealt with the contract between master and servant, but it did not do away with the dependence of the villain on the lord, and in case of conflict it gave precedence to this latter claim; a lord had the right to withdraw his villain from a stranger's service. Such cross influences could not but occasion a great deal of confusion, and our case gives a good instance of it. Thomas Barentyn has reclaimed Ralph Crips from the service of the Prior of the Hospitalers, and the employer sues in consequence both his former servant and Barentyn. This last answers, that the servant in question is his villain regardant to the manor of C. The plaintiff's counsel maintains that he could not have been regardant to the manor, as he was going about at large at his free will and as a free man; for this reason A. the former owner of the manor was never seised of him, and not being seised could not transfer the seisin to the present owner, although he transferred the manor. For the defendant it is pleaded, that going about freely is no enfranchisement, that by the gift of the manor every right connected with the manor was also conferred and that consequently the new lord could at any moment lay hands on his man, as the former lord could have done in his time. Ultimately the plaintiff offers to join issue on the question, whether the servant had been a villain regardant to the manor of C. or not. The defendant asserts, rather late in the day, that even if the person in question was not a villain regardant to the manor of C. the mere fact of his being a villain in gross would entitle his lord to call him away. This attempt to start on a new line is not allowed by the Court because the claim had originally been traversed on the ground of the connexion with the manor52.

The peculiarity of the case is that a third person has an interest to prove that the man claimed as villain had been as a free man. Usually there were but two parties in the contest about status; the lord pulling one way and the person claimed pulling the other way, but, through the influence of the Statute of Labourers, in our case lord and labourer were at one against a third party, the labourer's employer. The acknowledgment of villainage by the servant did not settle the question, because, though binding for the future, it was not sufficient to show that villainage had existed in the past, that is at the time when the contract of hire and service was broken through the interference of the lord. Everything depended on the settlement of one question—was the lord seised at the time, or not? Both parties agree that the lord was not actually seised of the person, both agree that he was seised of the manor, and both suppose that if the person had as a matter of fact been attached to the manor it would have amounted to a seisin of the person. And so the contention is shifted to this point: can a man be claimed through the medium of a manor, if he has not been actually living, working and serving in it? The court assumes the possibility, and so the parties appeal to the country to decide whether in point of fact Ralph Crips the shepherd had been in legal if not in actual connexion with the manor, i.e. could be traced to it personally or through his relatives.

Results as to 'villain regardant' and 'villain in gross.'

The case is interesting in many ways. It shows that the same man could be according to the point of view considered both as a villain in regard to a manor, and as a villain in gross. The relative character of the classification is thus illustrated as well as its importance for practical purposes. The transmission of a manor is taken to include the persons engaged in the cultivation of its soil, and even those whose ancestors have been engaged in such cultivation, and who have no special plea for severing the connexion.

As to the outcome of the whole inquiry, we may, it seems to me, safely establish the following points: 1. The terms 'regardant' and 'in gross' have nothing to do with a legal distinction of status. 2. They come up in connexion with the modes of proof and pleading during the fourteenth century. 3. They may apply to the same person from different points of view. 4. 'Villain in gross' means a villain without further qualification; 'villain regardant to a manor' means villain by reference to a manor. 5. The connexion with a manor, though only a matter of fact and not binding the lord in any way, might yet be legally serviceable to him, as a means of establishing and proving his rights over the person he claimed.

The astrier.

I need hardly mention, after what has been said, that there is no such thing as this distinction in the thirteenth century law books. I must not omit, however, to refer to one expression which may be taken to stand in the place of the later 'villain regardant to a manor.' Britton (ii. 55) gives the formula of the special plea of villainage to the assize of mort d'ancestor in the following words: 'Ou il poie dire qe il est soen vileyn et soen astrier et demourrant en son villenage.' There can be no doubt that residence on the lord's land is meant, and the term astrier leads even further, it implies residence at a particular hearth or in a particular house. Fleta gives the assize of novel disseisin to those who have been a long time away from their villain hearth53 ('extra astrum suum villanum,' p. 217). If the term 'astrier' were restricted to villains it would have proved a great deal more than the 'villain regardant' usually relied upon. But it is of very wide application. Britton uses it of free men entitled to rights of common by reason of tenements they hold in a township (i. 392). Bracton speaks of the case of a nephew coming into an inheritance in preference to the uncle because he had been living at the same hearth or in the same hall (in atrio or astro) with the former owner54, and in such or a similar sense the word appears to have been usually employed by lawyers55. On the other hand, if we look in Bracton's treatise for parallel passages to those quoted from the Fleta and Britton about the villain astrier, we find only a reference to the fact that the person in question was a serf and holding in villainage and under the sway of a lord56, and so there is nothing to denote special condition in the astrier. When the term occurs in connexion with villainage it serves to show that a person was not only a bondman born, but actually living in the power of his lord, and not in a state of liberty. The allusion to the hearth cannot possibly mean that the man sits in his own homestead, because only a few of the villains could have been holders of separate homesteads, and so it must mean that he was sitting in a homestead belonging to his lord, which is quite in keeping with the application of the term in the case of inheritance.

The territorial hold of villainage.

The facts we have been examining certainly suppose that in the villains we have chiefly to do with peasants tilling the earth and dependent on manorial organisation. They disclose the working of one element which is not to be simply deduced from the idea of personal dependence.

It may be called subjection to territorial power. The possession of a manor carries the possession of cultivators with it. It is always important to decide whether a bondman is in the seisin of his lord or not, and the chief means to show it is to trace his connexion with the territorial lordship. The interposition of the manor in the relation between master and man is, of course, a striking feature and it gives a very characteristic turn to medieval servitude. But if it is not consistent with the general theory laid down in the thirteenth century law books, it does not lead to anything like the Roman colonatus. The serf is not placed on a particular plot of land to do definite services under the protection of the State. He may be shifted from one plot within the jurisdiction of his lord to another, from one area of jurisdiction to another, from rural labour to industrial work or house work, from one set of customs and services to another. He is not protected by his predial connexion against his lord, and in fact such predial connexion is utilised to hold and bind him to his lord. We may say, that the unfree peasant of English feudalism was legally a personal dependant, but that his personal dependence was enforced through territorial lordship.

CHAPTER II.

RIGHTS AND DISABILITIES OF THE VILLAIN

Legal theory as we have seen endeavoured to bring the general conception of villainage under the principles of the Roman law of slavery, and important features in the practice of the common law went far to support it in so doing. On the other hand, even the general legal theory discloses the presence of an element quite foreign to the Roman conception. If we proceed from principles to their application in detail, we at once find, that in most cases the broad rules laid down on the subject do not fit all the particular aspects of villainage. These require quite different assumptions for their explanation, and the whole doctrine turns out to be very complex, and to have been put together out of elements which do not work well together.

Villainage by birth.

We meet discrepancies and confusion at the very threshold in the treatment of the modes in which the villain status has its origin. The most common way of becoming a villain was to be born to this estate, and it seems that we ought to find very definite rules as to this case. In truth, the doctrine was changing. Glanville (v. 6) tried in a way to conform to the Roman rule of the child following the condition of the mother, but it could not be made to work in England, and ever since Bracton, both common law and jurisprudence reject it. At the close of the Middle Ages it was held that if born in wedlock the child took after his father57, and that a bastard was to be accepted as filius nullius and presumed free58. Bracton is more intricate; the bastard follows the mother, the legitimate child follows the father; and there is one exception, in this way, that the legitimate child of a free man and a nief born in villainage takes after the mother59. It is not difficult to see why the Roman rule did not fit; it was too plain for a state of things which had to be considered from three different sides60. The Roman lawyer merely looked to the question of status and decided it on the ground of material demonstrability of origin61, if such an expression may be used. The Medieval lawyer had the Christian sanctification of marriage to reckon with, and so the one old rule had to be broken up into two rules—one applicable to legitimate children, the other to bastards. In case of bastardy the tendency was decidedly in favour of retaining the Roman rule, equally suiting animals and slaves, and the later theory embodied in Littleton belongs already to the development of modern ideas in favour of liberty62. In case of legitimacy the recognition of marriage led to the recognition of the family and indirectly to the closer connexion with the father as the head of the family. In addition to this a third element comes in, which may be called properly feudal. The action of the father-rule is modified by the influence of territorial subjection. The marriage of a free man with a nief may be considered from a special point of view, if, as the feudal phraseology goes, he enters to her into her villainage63. By this fact the free man puts his child under the sway of the lord, to whose villainage the mother belongs. It is not the character of the tenement itself which is important in this case, but the fact of subjection to a territorial lord, whose interest it is to retain a dependant's progeny in a state of dependency. The whole system is historically important, because it illustrates the working of one of the chief ingredients of villainage, an ingredient entirely absent from ancient slavery; whereas medieval villainage depends primarily on subjection to the territorial power of the lord. Once more we are shown the practical importance of the manorial system in fashioning the state of the peasantry. Generally a villain must be claimed with reference to a manor, in connexion with an unfree hearth; he is born in a nest64, which makes him a bondman. The strict legal notion has to be modified to meet the emergency, and villainage, instead of indicating complete personal subjection, comes to mean subjection to a territorial lord.

This same territorial element not only influences the status of the issue of a marriage, it also affects the status of the parties to a marriage, when those parties are of unequal condition. Most notable is the case of the free wife of a villain husband lapsing into servitude, when she enters the villain tenement of her consort; her servitude endures as long as her husband is in the lord's power, as long as he is alive and not enfranchised. The judicial practice of the thirteenth century gives a great number of cases where the tribunals refuse to vindicate the rights of women entangled in villainage by a mesalliance65. Such subjection is not absolute, however. The courts make a distinction between acquiring possession and retaining it. The same woman who will be refused a portion of her father's inheritance because she has married a serf, has the assize of novel disseisin against any person trying to oust her from a tenement of which she had been seised before her marriage66. The conditional disabilities of the free woman are not directly determined by the holding which she has entered, but by her marital subordination to an unfree husband ('sub virga,' Bract. Note-book, pl. 1685). For this reason the position of a free husband towards the villainage of his wife a nief is not exactly parallel. He is only subject to the general rules as to free men holding in villainage67. In any case, however, the instances which we have been discussing afford good illustrations of the fact, that villainage by no means flows from the simple source of personal subjection; it is largely influenced by the Christian organisation of the family and by the feudal mixture of rights of property and sovereignty embodied in the manorial system.

Prescription.

There are two other ways of becoming a villain besides being born to the condition; the acknowledgment of unfree status in a court of record, and prescription. We need not speak of the first, as it does not present any particulars of interest from a historical point of view. As to prescription, there is a very characteristic vacillation in our sources. In pleadings of Edward III's time its possibility is admitted, and it is pointed out, that it is a good plea if the person claimed by prescription shows that his father and grandfather68 were strangers.

There is a curious explanatory gloss, in a Cambridge MS. of Bracton, which seems to go back at least to the beginning of the fourteenth century, and it maintains that free stock doing villain service lapses into villainage in the fifth generation only69. On the other hand, Britton flatly denies the possibility of such a thing; according to him no length of time can render free men villains or make villains free men. Moreover he gives a supposed case (possibly based on an actual trial), in which a person claimed as a villain is made to go back to the sixth generation to establish his freedom.70 It does not seem likely that people could often vindicate their freedom by such elaborate argument, but the legal assumption expounded in Britton deserves full attention. It is only a consequence of the general view, that neither the holding nor the services ought to have any influence on the status of a man, and in so far it seems legally correct. But it is easy to see how difficult it must have been to keep up these nice distinctions in practice, how difficult for those who for generations had been placed in the same material position with serfs to maintain personal freedom.71 For both views, though absolutely opposed to each other, are in a sense equally true: the one giving the logical development of a fundamental rule of the law, the other testifying to the facts. And so we have one more general observation to make as to the legal aspect of villainage. Even in the definition of its fundamental principles we see notable discrepancies and vacillations, which are the result of the conflict between logical requirements and fluctuating facts.

Criminal law in its relation to villainage.

The original unity of purpose and firmness of distinction are even more broken up when we look at the criminal and the police law where they touch villainage. In the criminal law of the feudal epoch there is hardly any distinction between free men and villains. In point of amercements there is the well-known difference as to the 'contenement' of a free landholder, a merchant and a villain, but this difference is prompted not by privilege but by the diversity of occupations. The Dialogus de Scaccario shows that villains being reputed English are in a lower position than free men as regards the presumption of Englishry and the payment of the murder-fine,72 but this feature seems to have become obliterated in the thirteenth century. In some cases corporal punishment may have differed according to the rank of the culprit, and the formalities of ordeal were certainly different73. The main fact remains, that both villains and free men were alike able to prosecute anybody by way of 'appeal'74 for injury to their life, honour, and even property75, and equally liable to be punished and prosecuted for offences of any kind. Their equal right was completely recognized by the criminal law, and as a natural sequence of this, the pleas of the crown generally omit to take any notice of the status of parties connected with them. One may read through Mr. Maitland's collection of Pleas of the Crown edited for the Selden Society, or through his book of Gloucestershire pleas, without coming across any but exceptional and quite accidental mentions of villainage. In fact were we to form our view of the condition of England exclusively on the material afforded by such documents, we might well believe that the whole class was all but an extinct one. One glance at Assize Rolls or at Cartularies would teach us better. Still the silence of the Corona Rolls is most eloquent. It shows convincingly that the distinction hardly influenced criminal law at all.

Police in relation to villainage.

It is curious that, as regards police, villains are grouped under an institution which, even by its name, according to the then accepted etymology, was essentially a free institution. The system of frank pledge (plegium liberale), which should have included every one 'worthy of his were and his wite,' is, as a matter of fact, a system which all through the feudal period is chiefly composed of villains76. Free men possessed of land are not obliged to join the tithing because they are amenable to law which has a direct hold on their land77, and so the great mass of free men appear to be outside these arrangements, for the police representation of the free, or, putting it the other way, feudal serfs actually seem to represent the bulk of free society. The thirteenth-century arrangements do not afford a clue to such paradoxes, and one has to look for explanation to the history of the classes.

The frankpledge system is a most conspicuous link between both sections of society in this way also, that it directly connects the subjugated population with the hundred court, which is the starting-point of free judicial organisation. Twice a year the whole of this population, with very few exceptions, has to meet in the hundred in order to verify the working of the tithings. Besides this, the class of villains must appear by representatives in the ordinary tribunals of the hundred and the shire: the reeve and the four men, mostly unfree men78, with their important duties in the administration of justice, serve as a counterpoise to the exclusive employment of 'liberi et legales homines' on juries.

Civil disability of a villain as to his lord.

And now I come to the most intricate and important part of the subject—to the civil rights and disabilities of the villain. After what has been said of the villain in other respects, one may be prepared to find that his disabilities were by no means so complete as the strict operation of general rules would have required. The villain was able in many cases to do valid civil acts, to acquire property and to defend it in his own name. It is true that, both in theory and in practice, it was held that whatever was acquired by the bondman was acquired by the lord. The bondman could not buy anything but with his lord's money, as he had no money or chattels of his own79. But the working of these rules was limited by the medieval doctrine of possession. Land or goods acquired by the serf do not eo ipso lapse into his lord's possession, but only if the latter has taken them into his hand80. If the lord has not done so for any reason, for want of time, or carelessness, or because he did not choose to do so, the bondman is as good as the owner in respect of third persons. He can give away81 or otherwise alienate land or chattels, he has the assize of novel disseisin to defend the land, and leaves the assize of mort d'ancestor to his heirs. In this case it would be no good plea to object that the plaintiff is a villain. In fact this objection can be raised by a third person only with the addition that, as villain, the plaintiff does not hold in his own name, but in the name of his lord82. A third person cannot except against a plaintiff merely on the ground of his personal status. As to third persons, a villain is said to be free and capable to sue all actions83. This of course does not mean that he has any action for recovering or defending his possession of the tenements which he holds in villainage, but this disability is no consequence of his servile blood, for he shares it with the free man who holds in villainage; it is a consequence of the doctrine that the possession of the tenant in villainage is in law the possession of him who has the freehold. It may be convenient for a villain as defendant to shelter himself behind the authority of his lord84, and it was difficult to prevent him from doing so, although some attempts were made by the courts even in this case to distinguish whether a person had been in possession as a dependant or not. But there was absolutely nothing to prevent a villain from acting in every respect like a free man if he was so minded and was not interrupted by his lord. There was no need of any accessory action to make his acts complete and legal85. Again we come to an anomaly: the slave is free against everybody but his lord.

Convention with the lord.

Even against his lord the bondman had some standing ground for a civil action. It has rightly been maintained, that he could implead his master in consequence of an agreement with him. The assertion is not quite easy to prove however, and has been put forward too sweepingly86. At first sight it seems even that the old law books, i.e. those of Bracton and his followers, teach the opposite doctrine. They deal almost exclusively with the case of a feoffment made by the lord to a villain and his heirs, and give the feoffee an action only on the ground of implied manumission. The feoffor enfranchises his serf indirectly, even if he does not say so in as many words, because he has spoken of the feoffee's heirs, and the villain has no other heirs besides the lord87. The action eventually proceeds in this case, because it is brought not by a serf but by a freed man. One difficult passage in Bracton points another way; it is printed in a foot-note88. There can be no doubt, that in it Bracton is speaking of a covenant made by the lord not with a free man or a freed man, but with a villain. This comes out strongly when it is said, that the lord, and not the villain, has the assize against intruders, and when the author puts the main question—is the feoffor bound to hold the covenant or not? The whole drift of the quotation can be understood only on the fundamental assumption that we have lord and villain before us. But there are four words which militate against this obvious explanation; the words 'sibi et heredibus suis.' We know what their meaning is—they imply enfranchisement and a freehold estate of inheritance. They involve a hopeless contradiction to the doctrine previously stated, a doctrine which might be further supported by references to Britton, Fleta and Bracton himself89. In short, if we accept them, we can hardly get out of confusion. Were our text of Bracton much more definitely and satisfactorily settled than it is90, one would still feel tempted to strike them out; as it is we have a text studded with interpolations and errors, and it seems quite certain that 'sibi et heredibus suis' has got into it simply because the compositor of Tottell's edition repeated it from the conclusion of the sentence immediately preceding, and so mixed up two cases, which were to be distinguished by this very qualification. The four words are missing in all the MSS. of the British Museum, the Bodleian and the Cambridge University Library91. I have no doubt that further verification will only confirm my opinion. On my assumption Bracton clearly distinguishes between two possibilities. In one case the deed simply binds the lord as to a particular person, in the other it binds him in perpetuity; and in this latter case, as there ought not to be any heirs of a bondman but the lord, bondage is annihilated by the deed. It is not annihilated when one person is granted a certain privilege as to a particular piece of land, and in every other respect the grantee and all his descendants remain unfree92:—he has no freehold, but he has a special covenant to fall back upon. This seems to lie at the root of what Bracton calls privileged villainage by covenant as distinguished from villain socage93.