Prof Vinogradoff has dealt with 'the word wara' in his Villainage in England (i.
Definition and terminology of villainage at Common Law.
If the privileged villainage of ancient demesne is founded on the same causes as villainage pure and simple, the distinguishing element of 'privilege' is supplied to it by the private interest of the king.
And so the distinction between freehold and ancient demesne villainage is narrowed to a distinction of jurisdiction and procedure.
There is this to be noticed in any case, that most of the limitations we have been speaking of are found in full work at the very time when villainage was treated as slavery in the books.
And so I may conclude: an investigation into the legal aspect of villainage discloses three elements in its complex structure.
This procedure of revision on the whole is quite as important a manifestation of the freehold qualities of privileged villainage as pleading by writ.
It is well known, that the main argument in a trial of villainageturned on the question of kinship.
In their treatment of tenure they still hesitate between a complete denial of protection to villainage and the recognition of it as a mode of holding which is protected by legal remedies.
And as I said, one looks naturally to such instances of egregious independence, in order to explain the affinity between privileged villainage and freehold.
The law writers are trying hard to give a construction of villainage on the basis of the Roman doctrine of slavery, but their fabric gives way at every point.
When such tenants are opposed to the villains, they are probably free men holding in villainage by customary work[277].
The lord of the manor could still of course enforce his claim to the various payments and restrictions arising from the villainage of his tenants, but their position as payers of money was much less servile than as performers of forced labor.
Villainage as an institution continued to exist and to characterize the position of the mass of the peasantry.
In any suit against his lord the proof of his condition of villainage was sufficient to put him out of court, and his only recourse was the local court of the manor, where the lord himself or his representative presided.
So long as a villain was anywhere else than on the manor to which he belonged, he was practically a free man, but few of the disabilities of villainage existing except as between him and his own lord.
With their labor services commuted to money and the other conditions of their villainage no longer enforced, they became an indistinguishable part either of the yeomanry or of the body of agricultural laborers.
I had hoped that by this time Professor Vinogradoff's Villainage in England would have had a sequel.
This classification is not found in Bracton, and appears to date from the late Middle Ages, see Vinogradoff, Villainage in England, Essay II.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "villainage" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
