GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 71 



gated, general, nay wellnigh universal, as is the entry of 

 customary payments, contingent fines for licences granted to 

 villains, penalties levied for feudal transgressions, and com- 

 pensations made for customary services, all of which occur 

 abundantly, I have never found a trace of any transfer of 

 villains, or even of their services, to third parties. Surely if 

 the dependence of a villain was so complete as has been 

 generally believed, and his state was so completely a negation 

 of rights, we should find some solitary instance of the actual 

 sale of these unfortunates, or of some concession of their labour 

 to others. So absolute a silence, I submit, is sufficient to 

 prove that the legal theory of a villain's total lack of civil 

 rights as against his lord had become antiquated before the 

 period to which I refer, that, namely, which is treated in these 

 volumes. There is a single instance in the petitions to 

 Parliament in which a claim to the possession of certain 

 villains, said to have been demised in freehold by the peti- 

 tioner to another, but by whom they had been forfeited to the 

 crown, is put forth. The claim is rejected on the ground that 

 a forfeiture to the crown implied the forfeiture of all rights. 

 And, furthermore, the positive facts which have been collected 

 on the relative position of lord and villain, imply that the 

 eviction of a villain from his tenement was due to some 

 crime or breach of feudal obedience. In such a case it is 

 highly probable that the jury of the manor was competent to 

 declare that the behaviour of the offender justified a forfeiture, 

 and that so solemn a presentment was sufficient to eject the 

 villain from his land, (whereas in the case of a freeholder no 

 such process could be adopted, but, in place of it, an action 

 before the county court, or the judges in Eyre); but the act 

 is rare, and would not, we may conclude, be frequently resorted 

 to. It seems clear that the procedure of the manor court 

 depended entirely on the presentment of the jury, and that 

 no action could be taken in it at the instance of the steward 

 only. In some cases, too, it appears that the assent of the 

 homage was needful for the exercise of any authority on the 



