continued to improve during the 19th century. The Turks were defeated here in 1492 by Maximilian I., and an engagement between the Austrians and the French took place here on the 21st of August 1813.
VILLA DEL PILAR, a city of Paraguay, 104 m. S. by E. of Asuncion, on the left bank of the navigable river Paraguay, which receives the Bermejo from the right immediately opposite. Pop. (1910) about 10,000. Villa del Pilar is a thriving modern city, containing barracks, law courts, a national college, several schools and a branch of the Agricultural Bank. It has a fine harbour, and is one of the principal centres in the republic for the exportation of oranges.
VILLAFRANCA DI VERONA, a town of Venetia, Italy, in the province of Verona, 11 m. S.S.W. of Verona, on the railway to Mantua, 174 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 5037 (town); 9635 (commune). It has considerable silk industries. Here preliminaries of peace were signed between Napoleon III. and the Austrians in 1859 after the battle of Solferino. Five miles to the N. is Custozza, where the Italians were defeated by the Austrians in 1848 and 1866. Villafranca is a common place name in Italy.
VILLAGE COMMUNITIES. The study of village communities has become one of the fundamental methods of discussing the ancient history of institutions. It would be out of the question here to range over the whole field of human society in search for communal arrangements of rural life. It will be sufficient to confine the present inquiry to the varieties presented by nations of Aryan race, not because greater importance is to be attached to these nations than to other branches of humankind, although this view might also be reasonably urged, but principally because the Aryan race in its history has gone through all sorts of experiences, and the data gathered from its historical life can be tolerably well ascertained. Should the road be sufficiently cleared in this particular direction, it will not be difficult to connect the results with similar researches in other racial surroundings.
The best way seems to be to select some typical examples, chiefly from the domain of Celtic, Slavonic and Germanic social history, and to try to interpret them in regard to the general conditions in which communal institutions originate, grow and decay. As the principal problem will consist in ascertaining how far land was held in common instead of being held, as is usual at present, by individuals, it is advisable to look out for instances in which this element of holding in common is very clearly expressed. We ought to get, as it were, acclimatized to the mental atmosphere of such social arrangements in order to counteract a very natural but most pernicious bent prompting one to apply to the conditions of the past the key of our modern views and habitual notions. A certain acquaintance with the structure of Celtic society, more especially the society of ancient Wales, is likely to make it clear from the outset to what extent the husbandry and law of an Aryan race may depend on institutions in which the individual factor is greatly reduced, while the union first of kinsmen and then of neighbours plays a most decisive part.
F. Seebohm has called our attention to the interesting surveys of Welsh tracts of country made in the 14th century, soon after these regions passed into the hands of English lords. The fragments of these surveys published by him and his commentary on them are very illuminating, but further study of the documents themselves discloses many important details and helps to correct some theories propounded on the subject. Let us take up a concrete and simple case, e.g. the description of Astret Canon, a trev or township (villata) of the honour of Denbigh, surveyed in 1334. In the time of the native Welsh princes it was occupied entirely by a kindred (progenies) of free tribesmen descended from a certain Canon, the son of Lawaurgh. The kindred was subdivided into four gavells or bodies of joint-tenants. On the half-gavell of Monryk ap Canon, e.g. there are no less than sixteen coparceners, of whom eight possess houses. The peculiarity of this system of land tenure consists in the fact that all the tenants of these gavells derive their position on the land from the occupation of the township by their kindred, and have to trace their rights to shares in the original unit. Although the village of Astret Canon was occupied under the Survey by something like fifty-four male tenants, the majority of whom were settled in houses of their own, it continued to form a unit as well in regard to the payment of tungpound, that is, of the direct land tax and other services and payments, but also in respect of the possession and usage of the soil. On the other hand, movable property is owned in severalty. Services have to be apportioned among the members of the kindreds according to the number of heads of cattle owned by them. From the description of another township—Pireyon—we may gather another important feature of this tribal tenure. The population of this village also clustered in gavells, and we hear that these gavells ought to be considered as equal shares in respect of the arable, the wood and the waste of the township. If the shares were reduced into acres there would have fallen to each of the eight gavells of Pireyon ninety-one acres, one rood and a half and six perches of arable and woodland, and fifty-three and one-third of an acre and half a rood of waste land. But as a matter of fact the land was not divided in such a way, and the rights of the tenants of the gavell were realized not through the appropriation of definite acres, but as proportionate opportunities in regard to tillage and as to usages in pasture, wood and waste. Pastoral habits must have greatly contributed to give the system of landholding its peculiar character. It was not necessary, it would have been even harmful, to subdivide sharply the area on which the herds of cows and the flocks of sheep and goats were grazing. Still Welsh rural life in the 14th century had already a definite though subordinate agricultural aspect, and it is important to notice that individual appropriation had as yet made very slight progress in it.
We do not notice any systematic equalization between members of the tribal communities of the trevs. In fact, both differences in the ownership of cattle and differences of tribal standing, established by complex reckonings of pedigree and of social rank, led to marked inequalities. But there was also the notion of birthright, and we find in the laws that every free tribesman considered himself entitled to claim from his kindred grazing facilities and five erws for tillage. Such a claim could be made unconditionally only at a time when there was a superabundance of land to dispose of. In the 14th century, to which our typical descriptions refer, this state of things had ceased to be universal. Although great tracts of Welsh land were undoubtedly still in a state of wilderness, the soil in more conveniently situated regions was beginning to be scarce, and considerable pressure of population was already felt, with a consequent transition from pastoral pursuits to agriculture. The tract appropriated to the township of Astret Canon, for instance, contained only 574 acres of land of all kinds. In this case there was hardly room for the customary five erws per head of grown-up males besides commons. And yet although the population lived on a small pittance, the system of tribal tenure was not abandoned.
Although there are no rearrangements or redivision within the tribe as a whole, inside every gavell, representing more narrow circles of kinsmen, usually the descendants of one great-grandfather, i.e. second cousins, the shares are shifted and readjusted according to one of two systems. In one case, that of the trevcyvriv or joint-account village, every man receives “as much as another yet not of equal value”—which means, of course, that the members of such communities were provided with equal allotments, but left to make the best of them, each according to chance and ability. This practice of reallotment was, however, restricted in the 14th century to taeog trevs, to villages occupied by half-free settlers. The free tribesmen, the priodarii of Wales, held by daddenhud, and reallotted shares within the trev on the coming of each new generation or, conversely, on the going out, the dying out, of each older generation. In other words at the demise of the last of the grandfathers in a gavell, all the fathers took
