These notions are by no means abstractions bereft of practical import. Quite in keeping with them, manorial lords could remove peasants from their holdings at their will and pleasure. An appeal to the courts was of no avail: the lord in reply had only to oppose his right over the plaintiff's person, and to refuse to go into the subject-matter of the case.* Nor could the villain have any help as to the amount and the nature of his services;* the King's Courts will not examine any complaint in this respect, and may sometimes go so far as to explain that it is no business of theirs to interfere between the lord and his man.* In fact any attempt on the part of the dependant to assert civil rights as to his master will be met and defeated by the 'exceptio villenagii.'* The state refuses to regulate the position of this class on the land, and therefore there can be no question about any legal 'ascription' to the soil. Even as to his person, the villain was liable to be punished and put into prison by the lord, if the punishment inflicted did not amount to loss of life or injury to his body The extant Plea Rolls and other judicial records are full of allusions to all these rights of the lord and disabilities of the villain, and it must be taken into account that only an infinitely small part of the actual cases can have left any trace in such records, as it was almost hopeless to bring them to the notice of the Royal Courts.*It is not strange that in view of such disabilities Bracton thought himself entitled to assume equality of condition between the English villain and the Roman slave, and to use the terms servus, villanus, and nativus indiscriminately. The characteristics of slavery are copied by him from Azo's commentary on the institutes, as material for a description of the English bondmen, and he distinguishes them carefully even from the Roman adscripticii or coloni of base condition. The villains are protected in some measure against their lord in criminal law; they cannot be slain or maimed at pleasure; but such protection is also afforded to slaves in the later law of the Empire, and in fact it is based in Bracton on the text of the Institutes given by Azo, which in its turn is simply a summary of enactments made by Hadrian and Antonine. The minor law books of the thirteenth century follow Bracton in this identification of villainage with slavery. Although this identification could not but exercise a decisive influence on the theory of the subject, it must be borne in mind that it did not originate in a wanton attempt to bring together in the books dissimilar facts from dissimilar ages. On the contrary, it came into the books because practice had paved the way for it. Bracton was enabled to state it because he did not see much difference between the definitions of Azo and the principles of Common Law, as they had been established by his masters Martin of Pateshull and William Raleigh. He was wrong, as will be shown by-and-by, but certainly he had facts to lean upon, and his theory cannot be dismissed on the ground of his having simply copied it from a foreigner's treatise.
Most modern writers on the subject have laid stress upon a difference between villains regardant and villains in gross, said to be found in the law books.* It has been taken to denote two degrees of servitude -- the predial dependence of a colonus and the personal dependence of a true slave. The villain regardant was (it is said) a villain who laboured under disabilities in relation to his lord only, the villain in gross possessed none of the qualities of a freeman. One sub-division would illustrate the debasement of freemen who had lost their own land, while the other would present the survival of ancient slavery.
In opposition to these notions I cannot help thinking that Hallam was quite right in saying: 'In the condition of these (villains regardant and villains in gross), whatever has been said by some writers, I can find no manner of difference; the distinction was merely technical, and affected only the mode of pleading. The term in gross is appropriated in our legal language to property held absolutely and without reference to any other.
Thus it is applied to rights of advowson or of common, when possessed simply, and not as incident to any particular lands.
And there can be no doubt that it was used in the same sense for the possession of a villein.' (Middle Ages, iii. 173; cf. note XIV.) Hallam's statement did not carry conviction with it however, and as the question is of considerable importance in itself and its discussion will incidentally help to bring out one of the chief points about villainage, I may be allowed to go into it at some length.
