We meet discrepancies and confusion at the very threshold in the treatment of the modes in which the villain status has its origin. The most common way of becoming a villain was to be born to this estate, and it seems that we ought to find very definite rules as to this case. In truth, the doctrine was changing. Glanville (v. 6) tried in a way to conform to the Roman rule of the child following the condition of the mother, but it could not be made to work in England, and ever since Bracton, both common law and jurisprudence reject it. At the close of the Middle Ages it was held that if born in wedlock the child took after his father[57], and that a bastard was to be accepted as _filius nullius_ and presumed free[58]. Bracton is more intricate; the bastard follows the mother, the legitimate child follows the father; and there is one exception, in this way, that the legitimate child of a free man and a nief born in villainage takes after the mother[59]. It is not difficult to see why the Roman rule did not fit; it was too plain for a state of things which had to be considered from three different sides[60]. The Roman lawyer merely looked to the question of status and decided it on the ground of material demonstrability of origin[61], if such an expression may be used. The Medieval lawyer had the Christian sanctification of marriage to reckon with, and so the one old rule had to be broken up into two rules--one applicable to legitimate children, the other to bastards. In case of _bastardy_ the tendency was decidedly in favour of retaining the Roman rule, equally suiting animals and slaves, and the later theory embodied in Littleton belongs already to the development of modern ideas in favour of liberty[62]. In case of _legitimacy_ the recognition of marriage led to the recognition of the family and indirectly to the closer connexion with the father as the head of the family. In addition to this a third element comes in, which may be called properly feudal. The action of the father-rule is modified by the influence of territorial subjection. The marriage of a free man with a nief may be considered from a special point of view, if, as the feudal phraseology goes, he enters to her into her villainage[63]. By this fact the free man puts his child under the sway of the lord, to whose villainage the mother belongs. It is not the character of the tenement itself which is important in this case, but the fact of subjection to a territorial lord, whose interest it is to retain a dependant's progeny in a state of dependency. The whole system is historically important, because it illustrates the working of one of the chief ingredients of villainage, an ingredient entirely absent from ancient slavery; whereas medieval villainage depends primarily on subjection to the territorial power of the lord. Once more we are shown the practical importance of the manorial system in fashioning the state of the peasantry. Generally a villain must be claimed with reference to a manor, in connexion with an unfree hearth; he is born in a nest[64], which makes him a bondman. The strict legal notion has to be modified to meet the emergency, and villainage, instead of indicating complete personal subjection, comes to mean subjection to a territorial lord.