Constitutional History.
624
Λ et s of
IlLinuinis-
Sion.
Bondmen
on manors.
[chap.
lord without the risk of being brought again into bondage.
There was no doubt a strong tendency to make the servile
relation altogether dependent on the tenure of land, and to
put an end even to the forms of personal servitude, the dis-
abilities which were attached to the blood as well as to the
territorial status of the villein. By acts of emancipation or
manumission the ‘ native ’ was made a freeman, even thouɛh
with the disabilities he lost the privileges of maintenance which
he could claim on the land of his lord. And acts of emanci-
pation were regarded by the church as meritorious. The old
law books drew a distinction between the villein regardant and
the villein in gross : the villein regardant was a villein who
laboured under disabilities in relation to his lord only ; the villein
in gross possessed none of the qualities of a freeman. This dis-
tinction is now regarded as fallacious, and English sentiment
has always been adverse to considering any man of native blood
as less than free1. Until we have a much more thorough in-
vestigation of the manorial records than has been yet at-
tempted, no absolutely convincing decision can be arrived at
on this point ; but it appears certain from known instances
that there were, down to the close of the middle ages, and
perhaps longer, bondmen on many manors, for whom the
definition of villein regardant would not be adequate. Possibly
these were the survivors of the peasant population which
had been servile before the Conquest ; or, possibly they had
been depressed by the very definitions of the law which they
are found to illustrate. All that is certain is that they were
disqualified from all the functions of political life, and were,
owing to their depressed social state, the objects of much
pity. It is from the acts of manumission that we learn
what little we know of their legal status ; and some of those
acts of manumission are, in language at least, creditable to the
age that encouraged them. ‘Whereas,’ writes bishop Sherborne
of Chichester in 1536, quoting the Institutes of Justinian, ‘at
the beginning nature brought forth all men free, and afterwards
1 See on the whole subject, Vinogradoff on Villainage, Oxford, 1892 ;
Pollock and Maitland, Hist, of Eng. Law, i. 395 sq.
XXi.] Manumission. 625
the Iaiv of nations placed certain of them under the yoke of A ∞an∏-
servitude; we believe that it is pious and meritorious towards a bondman.
God to manumit them and to restore them to the benefit of
pristine liberty ; ’ and on this consideration he proceeds to
liberate Nicolas Holden, a t native and serf,’ who for many
years has served him on his manor of Woodmancote and else-
where, from every chain, servitude, and servile condition, by
which he was bound to the bishop and his cathedral church ;
‘ and, so far as we can,’ he adds, ‘ we make him a freeman ;
so that the said Nicolas, with the whole of the issue to be
begotten by him, may remain free, and have power freely to
do and exercise all and singular the acts which are competent
to free men, just as if he had been begotten by free parents1.’
All acts of manumission, it is true, are not worded like this ;
but it is obvious that, in such an act, something more was done
than the mere release of the villein from the services that were
due by reason of his lord’s right over the land which he oc-
cupied, and that the native so emancipated laboured under
other disqualifications than those from which he could have
delivered himself by obtaining his lord’s leave to quit his
holding. On whatever the hold of the lord over his f native ’ importance
was originally based, there were at the date of the Reformation, mission,
and after it, whole families who were liable to be sold as well
as to be emancipated. Against this is to be set the fact that
the sums for which the villein and his whole family and chattels
weιe transferred from one owner to another were so small as to
prove that the rights thus acquired, however heavy the disabi-
lities of the villein may have been, were worth little to the
master ; and from this it may be inferred that the act of manu-
mission itself was intended rather to prove that the emanci-
pated person was not disqualified for holy orders or for
knighthood, than to give him the ordinary powers of a free-
man. We may conjecture that the one class of villeins had Possible
fallen into villenage by occupying some of the demesne of the vlneɪmge.
lord on servile conditions, and that another was a chattel of
1 From Bishop Sherborne’s Begister at Chichester; folio 150. Other
forms will be found in Madox, Formulare Anglicanum, pp. 416-420.
VOL. III. S S