Page:Landholding in England.djvu/23

 Saxons, whereby a man could choose a suzerain. This suzerain became his protector, and could demand service in return. Besides any other advantages, the price paid to a man's family if he happened to be murdered or injured, was higher in proportion to the dignity of the suzerain who was thus deprived of his services.

The villein has been called "the highest of the unfree." In Roman times he was the slave who worked upon the villa, the country estate of a great man. He was called a "villanus," because he was enrolled as belonging to a villa (quia villae adscriptus est), and adscriptus glebae, as belonging to a glebe or meadow. There were two kinds of villeins — villeins regardant, and villeins in gross. The villein regardant was so called because "he hath the charge to do all base or villeinous services" within the manor, "and to gard the same from all filthieor loathsome things that might annoy it; and his service is not certaine, but he must have regard to that which is commanded unto him" (Coke). A villein in gross belonged not to the manor, but to the person of the lord, who could sell him if he chose. The chattels of the villein regardant were his own, or rather they belonged to his holding. He was called a tenant-in-villenage, and the part of the manor which he tilled was a villagium, or "village," to distinguish it from the demesne, or part farmed by the lord, which of course usually surrounded the manor-house. We call it