The Rural Classes of England. 227 



far outnumbers all the others taken together ; the consueiudinarii 

 may therefore be pronounced the main body of the peasantry, 

 and the uniformity of their estate and services shows them to 

 have been a compact, organized body. 



It remains to trace, so far as possible, the origin of these 

 three classes. In this, our starting point mast be Domesday 

 Book. According to this, there existed throughout England, 

 in the eleventh century, (besides certain local and occasional 

 classes), two great classes of peasantry — the villani, or villagers, 

 and the bordarii, or cottagers. Borh these classes are found in 

 every county, and in nearly every manor. 



In the paper that I read last year, I attempted to prove that 

 the villani, who are generally recognized to have been the 

 Anglo-Saxon ceoy^ls, were the representatives of the primative 

 Village Conmmunities, which recent investigations of Nasse, 

 Maine and others, have shown to have existed in early times 

 in England, as in other Germanic countries. The argument may 

 be briefly summed up as follows: 1. The word villanus means 

 villager etymologically ; and we find no trace in the eleventh, 

 century of the servitude or degradation which are associated 

 with the villeins of the thirteenth century. 2. The villani are, 

 in the document entitled '■'■ Rectitudines Singularura Person- 

 arurUy'' identified with the Anglo-Saxon Geneat^ as the highest 

 class of the peasantry ; and their services are described as 

 more moderate and of a higher order than those of the other 

 classes. 3. In the " Exeter Domesday " the villani are regu- 

 larly spoken of as land-holders, as distinguished from the 

 hordarii on the other hand, and from the lord's demesne on 

 the other. 5. The laws of King Edgar' contrast the thegn's 

 " inland " or demesne, with the " geneat-land ; " and we have 

 just seen that the geneot were the villani. 



Thus far we have proved only that the villani were the occu- 

 pants of the " utiand " or " tenement lands " of the manor, that 

 the land held by them was of a very considerable amount, and 



»i. 1. 



