Treating of it only in so far as it illustrates the law of status, it presents in separate existence the two classes which were fused in the system of the Common Law; villain socmen are carefully distinguished from the villains, and the two groups are treated differently in every way. A most interesting fact, and one to be taken up hereafter, is the way of treating the privileged group as the normal one. Villain socmen are the men of ancient demesne; villains are the exception, they appear only on the lord's demesne, and seem very few, so far as we can make a calculation of numbers. Villain socmen enjoy a certainty of condition which becomes actual tenant-right when the manor passes from the crown into a private lord's hand. As to its origin there can be no doubt -- ancient demesne is traced back to Saxon times in as many words and by all our authorities.
A careful analysis of the law of ancient demesne may even give us valuable clues to the condition of the Saxon peasantry.
The point just noticed, namely, that the number of villain socmen is exceedingly large and quite out of proportion to that of other tenants, gives indirect testimony that the legal protection of the tenure was not due merely to an influx of free owners deprived of their lands by conquest. This is the explanation given by Bracton, but it is not sufficient to account for the privileged position of almost all the tenants within the manor. Aconsiderable part of them surely held before the Conquest not as owners and not freely, but as tenants by base services, and their fixity of tenure is as important in the constitution of ancient demesne as is the influx of free owners. If this latter cause contributed to keep up the standard of this status, the former cause supplied that tradition of certainty to which ancient demesne right constantly appeals.
Another point to be kept firmly in view is that the careful distinction kept up on the ancient demesne between villain socmen and villains, proves the law on this subject to have originated in the general distribution of classes and rights during the Saxon period, and not in the exceptional royal privilege which preserved it in later days; I mean, that if certainty of condition had been granted to the tenantry merely because it was royal tenantry, which is unlikely enough in itself, the certainty would have extended to tenants of all sorts and kinds. It did not, because it was derived from a general right of one class of peasants to be protected at law, a right which did not in the least preclude the lord from using his slaves as mere chattels.
And so I may conclude: an investigation into the legal aspect of villainage discloses three elements in its complex structure.
Legal theory and political disabilities would fain make it all but slavery; the manorial system ensures it something of the character of the Roman colonatus; there is a stock of freedom in it which speaks of Saxon tradition.
NOTES:
1. Brunner, Entstehung der Schwurgericht, has made an epoch on the discussion of this phenomenon.
2. I shall treat at length of the Norman Conquest in my third essay.
3. Leg. Will. Conq. i, 29 (Schmid, p. 340).
