The Rural Classes of England. 231 



the freehold is nothiug but a cottage or a messuage with a 

 garden lot. It is testified by Britton ' that a villain may be 

 enfeoffed by his lord, " et par tel feffement est le vileyn 

 fraunc." It is a strong confirmation of this view, that in the 

 only place in which the word villani occurs in this GloucesteF 

 castulary, it is used of the tenants in free socage.^ 



The free tenants in socage appear, therefore, to have been 

 members of the class of villani^ and to have been either ad- 

 anced by way of privilege to a more favored condition, or were 

 exempted from the burdens gradually imposed upon the rest 

 of the class, and thus remained more nearly in their original 

 freedom ; for there seems no doubt that the villagers as a 

 class had sunk between the eleventh century and the thirteenth 

 — the villani had become villeins^ serfs. Probably the correct 

 view is between the two. The y^7?ay^^' held by praedial services 

 in the eleventh century, as is shown by the Rectiiudines ; the 

 free tenants were therefore actually privileged by having these 

 services commuted for money payments, while at the same 

 time the services of the class from which they were raised were 

 made more base and burdensome. This view agrees with that 

 of Mr. Finlason, editor of Eeeve's History of English Law,' 

 that "our common freehold estates arose out of villenage.'j 

 It is also supported by the rent roll of the manor of Addingtott 

 in Kent, dating 1257-71, where we find asimilai irregular and 

 quite insignificant class of freeholders, while the mass of the 

 tenants hold by praedial services," 



As regards the position of this class which I have called the 

 body of the peasantry, — the villani of the eleventh century ,- 

 and the consuetudinarii of the thirteenth, — I have attempted 

 above to identify them with the members of the primitive vil- 

 lage communities, which have lately been shown to have con- 

 tinued in existence down through the Middle Ages, and eveo 



1 Book II. 7, 2. 



^Extenta de Mayesmore, p. 171. 



»Vol. I, p. 70. note. 



<Larking's Domesday Book of Kent, .A pp. p. XXI. 



