VILLEINAGE (VILLAINAGE, VILLENAGE), a mediaeval term (from villa, villanus), pointing to serfdom, a condition of men intermediate between freedom and slavery. It occurs in France as well as in England, and was certainly imported into English speech through the medium of Norman French.
The materials for the formation of the villein class were already in existence in the Anglo-Saxon period. On the one hand, the Saxon ceorls (twihyndemen), although considered as including the typical freemen in the earlier laws (Aethelberht, Hlothhere and Edric, Ine), gradually became differentiated through the action of political and economic causes, and many of them had to recognize the patronage of magnates or to seek livelihood as tenants on the estates of the latter. These ceorls, sitting on gaf ol land, were, though personally free, considered as a lower order of men, and lapsed gradually into more or less oppressive sub jection to the lords of whom they held their land. It is character istic in this connection that the West Saxon laws do not make any distinction between ceorls and laets or half-freemen as the Kentish laws had done : this means that the half-free people were, if not Welshmen, reckoned as members of the ceorl class. Another remarkable indication of the decay of the ceorl's estate is af forded by the fact that in the treaties with the Danes the twihynde ceorls are equated with the Danish leysings or freedmen. It does not mean, of course, that their condition was practically the same, but in any case the fact testifies to the gulf which had come to separate the two principal subdivisions of the free class —the ceorl and the thegn. The Latin version of the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, a document compiled probably in the iith century, renders geneat (a peasant tenant of a superior kind performing lighter services than the gebur, who was burdened with heavy week-work) by villanus; but the gebur came to be also considered as a villanus according to Anglo-Norman termin ology. The group designated as geburs in Anglo-Saxon charters, though distinguished from mere slaves, undoubtedly included many freedmen who in point of services and economic subjection were not very much above the slaves. Both ceorls and geburs disappear as separate classes, and it is clear that the greater part of them must have passed into the rank of villeins.
In the terminology of the Domesday Inquest we find the villeins as the most numerous element of the English population. Out of about 240,000 households enumerated in Domesday Ioo,000 are marked as belonging to villeins. They are rustics perform ing, as a rule, work services for their lords. But not all the inhabitants of the villages were designated by that name. Villeins are opposed to socmen and freemen on one hand, to bordarii, cottagers and slaves on the other. The distinction in regard to the first two of these groups was evidently derived from their greater freedom, although the difference is only one in degree and not in kind. In fact, the villein is assumed to be a person free by birth, but holding land of which he cannot dispose freely. The distinc tion as against bordarii and cottagers is based on the size of the holding : the villeins are holders of regular shares in the village —that is, of the virgates, bovates or half-hides which constitute the principal subdivisions in the fields and contribute to form the plough-teams—whereas the bordarii hold smaller plots of some five acres, more or less, and cottarii are connected with mere cottages and crofts. Thus the terminology of Domesday takes note of two kinds of differences in the status of rustics: a legal one in connection with the right to dispose of property in land, and an economic one reflecting the opposition between the holders of shares in the fields and the holders of auxiliary tenements. The feature of personal serfdom is also noticeable, but it provides a basis only for the comparatively small group of servi, of whom only about 25,00o are enumerated in Domesday Book. The con trast between this exceptionally situated class and the rest of the population shows that personal slavery was rapidly disappear ing in England about the time of the Conquest. It is also to be noticed that the Domesday Survey constantly mentions the terra villanorum as opposed to the lord's demesne, and that the land of the rustics is taxed separately for the geld, so that the distinction between the property of the lord and that of the peasant dependent on him is clearly marked.