Saxons, whereby a man could choose a suzerain. This suzerain became his protector, and could demand service in return. Besides any other advantages, the price paid to a man's family if he happened to be murdered or injured, was higher in proportion to the dignity of the suzerain who was thus deprived of his services.
The villein[1] has been called "the highest of the unfree." In Roman times he was the slave who worked upon the villa,[2] the country estate of a great man. He was called a "villanus," because he was enrolled as belonging to a villa (quia villae adscriptus est), and adscriptus glebae, as belonging to a glebe or meadow. There were two kinds of villeins — villeins regardant, and villeins in gross. The villein regardant was so called because "he hath the charge to do all base or villeinous services" within the manor, "and to gard the same from all filthieor loathsome things that might annoy it; and his service is not certaine, but he must have regard[3] to that which is commanded unto him" (Coke). A villein in gross belonged not to the manor, but to the person of the lord, who could sell him if he chose. The chattels of the villein regardant were his own, or rather they belonged to his holding.[4] He was called a tenant-in-villenage, and the part of the manor which he tilled was a villagium, or "village," to distinguish it from the demesne, or part farmed by the lord, which of course usually surrounded the manor-house. We call it
- ↑ "Villani in Domesday are not taken there for bondmen … such as are bondmen are there called servi."—Coke, "Of Fee Simple."
- ↑ "Vil" or "Villa" now usually refers to a "town." In ancient Italy it meant an estate, and the villani were the tillers of the estate.
- ↑ "And it is to be understood, that nothing is named regardant to a manor, etc., but a villeine. But certaine other things, as an advowson, and common of pasture, etc., are named appendant."—Littleton.
- ↑ The fine for killing a villein was paid to his kindred, not to his lord.
troversy, was a cottager with land (Borde, Norman French for "cottage"). His service was to supply the table of the lord with small provisions, such as poultry. Some bordarii paid rent. There were bordarii in the burgs. Coke says that bordarii are "in effect bores or husbandmen, or cottagers," and that those mentioned in Domesday are "bores holding a little house with some land of husbandry bigger than a cottage … coterelli are mere cottagers," who hold a cottage and a garden. Censores were free tenants at a fixed money rent.
