Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History. Paul Vinogradoff

Conquest; it was in use before the Conquest as the Latin equivalent of ceorl, geneat, and probably gebúr. Its success in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is a success of Latin, and not of French, of the half-literary record language over conversational idioms, and not of foreign over vernacular notions. The peculiarly French 'bordier,' on the other hand, gets misunderstood and eliminated. Looking to Saxon and Danish terms, we find that they hold their ground tenaciously enough; but still the one most prevalent before the Conquest—ceorl—disappears entirely, and all the others taken together cannot balance the diffusion of the 'villains.' The disappearance of ceorl may be accounted for by the important fact that it was primarily the designation of a free man, and had not quite lost this sense even in the time immediately before the Conquest. The spread of the Latin term is characteristic enough in any case. It is well in keeping with a historical development which, though it cannot be reduced to an importation of foreign manners, was by no means a mere sequel to Saxon history292. A new turn had been given towards centralisation and organisation from above, and villanus, the Latin record term, illustrates very aptly the remodelling of the lower stratum of society by the influence of the curiously centralised English feudalism.

      The position of the peasantry gets considered chiefly from the point of view of the lord's interests, and the classification on the basis of services comes naturally to the fore. The distribution of holdings is also noticed, because services and rents are arranged according to them. But the most important fact remains, that the whole system, though admitting theoretically the difference between personal freedom and personal subjection, works itself out into uniformity on the ground of unfree tenure. Freemen holding in villainage and born villains get mixed up under the same names. The fact has its two sides. On the one hand it detracts from the original rights of free origin, on the other it strengthens the element of order and legality in the relations between lord and peasant. The peasants are custumarii at the worst—they work by custom, even if custom is regulated by the lord's power. In any case, even a mere analysis of terminological distinctions leads to the conclusion that the simplicity and rigidity of legal contrasts was largely modified by the influence of historical tradition and practical life.