[Definition and terminology of villainage at Common Law.]
As to the general aspect of villainage in the legal theory of English feudalism there can be no doubt. The 'Dialogus de Scaccario' gives it in a few words: the lords are owners not only of the chattels but of the bodies of their _ascripticii_, they may transfer them wherever they please, 'and sell or otherwise alienate them if they like[32].' Glanville and Bracton, Fleta and Britton[33] follow in substance the same doctrine, although they use different terms. They appropriate the Roman view that there is no difference of quality between serfs and serfs: all are in the same abject state. Legal theory keeps a very firm grasp of the distinction between status and tenure, between a villain and a free man holding in villainage, but it does not admit of any distinction of status among serfs: _servus_, _villanus_, and _nativus_ are equivalent terms as to personal condition, although this last is primarily meant to indicate something else besides condition, namely, the fact that a person has come to it by birth[34]. The close connexion between the terms is well illustrated by the early use of _nativa_, nieve, 'as a feminine to _villanus_.'
[Treatment of villainage in legal practice.]
These notions are by no means abstractions bereft of practical import. Quite in keeping with them, manorial lords could remove peasants from their holdings at their will and pleasure. An appeal to the courts was of no avail: the lord in reply had only to oppose his right over the plaintiff's person, and to refuse to go into the subject-matter of the case[35]. Nor could the villain have any help as to the amount and the nature of his services[36]; the King's Courts will not examine any complaint in this respect, and may sometimes go so far as to explain that it is no business of theirs to interfere between the lord and his man[37]. In fact any attempt on the part of the dependant to assert civil rights as to his master will be met and defeated by the 'exceptio villenagii[38].' The state refuses to regulate the position of this class on the land, and therefore there can be no question about any legal 'ascription' to the soil. Even as to his person, the villain was liable to be punished and put into prison by the lord, if the punishment inflicted did not amount to loss of life or injury to his body[39]. The extant Plea Rolls and other judicial records are full of allusions to all these rights of the lord and disabilities of the villain, and it must be taken into account that only an infinitely small part of the actual cases can have left any trace in such records, as it was almost hopeless to bring them to the notice of the Royal Courts[40].