. 
: 
; 
: 
‘ 
By the Rev. J. Wilkinson. 275 
and serfs belonged. Nor are we likely to fall into any grievous error 
by entertaining such general notions, as the etymology of these 
several names may give us; for though etymology (as Mr. Hallam! 
says) is an uncertain guide in almost all investigations, yet this 
warning applies to a word which has been long in use, and has 
passed through many secondary significations, rather than to the 
immediate source from which the sign has passed into the speech . 
of the people, and its primary application in their language. For 
instance. The word villain now denotes one destitute of every 
moral and religious principle, a thorough unmitigated rascal. 
From its derivation it would appear to mean nothing worse than a 
harmless cottager, one attached to the vil/a or farm, which he could 
not leave, and on which he was bound to perform a certain amount 
of work. He had not, and he was not ambitious of having politi- 
cal power: indeed, according to the legal language of the time he 
could be bought and sold. And yet, though such expressions seem 
to exclude all notion of personal liberty, he was no slave. The 
sale was of the land to which he was appurtenant: its disposition 
whether by gift, bequest, or sale, was the disposition of the villain 
and his agricultural services. This transaction, however open to 
abuse, widely differs from the transfer of a slave, whose body is 
the subject of purchase and who may be taken anywhere. He 
might be a territorial, but not a personal bondsman. He could 
not indeed leave the lord’s land, but neither could the land leave 
him, he must be maintained. If he was obliged to do a certain 
quantity of work, it was as rent, payment for the few roods of land 
which he occupied for his own benefit. He had a certain tenant 
right, a certain qualified interest in the soil, which he gradually 
improved till he came to be called a customary tenant and defied 
ejection. He was taxable at the will of the lord (though it is not 
easy to see what beyond his services could be got out of him), nei- 
ther could he marry his daughter or put his son into Holy Orders, 
without the express leave and license of the lord. 
I take the bordarii to be also cottage tenants, deriving their name 
either from bord (the Anglo-Saxon word for a cottage), or (which 
' Burope during the Middle Ages. "Chap. viii. p. i, 
