19th century in Larra's Macias and in Hartzenbusch's play La Redoma encantada. (J. F-K.)
VILLENA, a town of eastern Spain, in the province of Alicante; on the right bank of the river Vinalapo, and at the junction of railways from Valencia, Alicante, Albacete and Yecla. Pop. (1900) 14,099. Villena is a labyrinth of winding alleys, which contain some interesting examples of Moorish domestic architecture. It is dominated by a large and picturesque Moorish castle. The surrounding hills are covered with vines, and to the east there is an extensive salt lagoon. Silk, linen, flour, wine, brandy, oil, salt and soap are the chief industrial products.
VILLENAGE (Villainage, Villanage, Villeinage), a medieval term (from villa, villanus), pointing to serfdom, a condition of men intermediate between freedom and slavery. It occurs in France as well as in England, and was certainly imported into English speech through the medium of Norman French. The earliest instances of its use are to be found in the Latin and French versions of English documents in the 11th and 12th centuries (cf. Domesday Book; Liebermann, Glossary to the Gesetze der Angelsachsen, s.v. villanus, vilain). The history of the word and of the condition is especially instructive in English usage.
The materials for the formation of the villein class were already in existence in the Anglo-Saxon period. On the one hand, the Saxon ceorls (twihyndemen), although considered as including the typical freemen in the earlier laws (Æthelberht, Hlothhere and Edric, Ine), gradually became differentiated through the action of political and economic causes, and many of them had to recognize the patronage of magnates or to seek livelihood as tenants on the estates of the latter. These ceorls, sitting on gafol-land, were, though personally free, considered as a lower order of men, and lapsed gradually into more or less oppressive subjection in respect of the great landowners. It is characteristic in this connexion that the West Saxon laws do not make any distinction between ceorls and laets or half-freemen as the Kentish laws had done: this means that the half-free people were, if not Welshmen, reckoned as members of the ceorl class. Another remarkable indication of the decay of the ceorl's estate is afforded by the fact that in the treaties with the Danes the twihynde ceorls are equated with the Danish leysings or freedmen. It does not mean, of course, that their condition was practically the same, but in any case the fact testifies to the gulf which had come to separate the two principal subdivisions of the free class—the ceorl and the thane. The Latin version of the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, a document compiled probably in the 11th century, not long before the Conquest, renders geneat (a peasant tenant of a superior kind performing lighter services than the gebur, as he was burdened with heavy week-work) by villanus; but the gebur came to be also considered as a villanus according to Anglo-Norman terminology. The group designated as geburs in Anglo-Saxon charters, though distinguished from mere slaves (theow baerde-burbaerde, Kemble, Cod. Dipl. 1079), undoubtedly included many freedmen who in point of services and economic subjection were not very much above the slaves. Both ceorls and geburs disappear as separate classes, and it is clear that the greater part of them must have passed into the rank of villeins.
In the terminology of the Domesday Inquest we find the villeins as the most numerous element of the English population. Out of about 240,000 households enumerated in Domesday 100,000 are marked as belonging to villeins. They are rustics performing, as a rule, work services for their lords. But not all the inhabitants of the villages were designated by that name. Villeins are opposed to socmen and freemen on one hand, to bordarii, cottagers and slaves on the other. The distinction in regard to the first two of these groups was evidently derived from their greater freedom, although the difference is only one in degree and not in kind. In fact, the villein is assumed to be a person free by birth, but holding land of which he cannot dispose freely. The distinction as against bordarii and cottagers is based on the size of the holding: the villeins are holders of regular shares in the village—that is, of the virgates, bovates or half-hides which constitute the principal subdivisions in the fields and contribute to form the plough-teams—whereas the bordarii hold smaller plots of some 5 acres, more or loss, and cotiarii are connected with mere cottages and crofts. Thus the terminology of Domesday takes note of two kinds of differences in the status of rustics: a legal one in connexion with the right to dispose of property in land, and an economic one reflecting the opposition between the holders of shares in the fields and the holders of auxiliary tenements. The feature of personal serfdom is also noticeable, but it provides a basis only for the comparatively small group of servi, of whom only about 25,000 are enumerated in Domesday Book. The contrast between this exceptionally situated class and the rest of the population shows that personal slavery was rapidly disappearing in England about the time of the Conquest. It is also to be noticed that the Domesday Survey constantly mentions the terra villanorum as opposed to the demesne in the estates or manors of the time, and that the land of the rustics is taxed separately for the geld, so that the distinction between the property of the lord and that of the peasant dependent on him is clearly marked and by no means devoid of practical importance.
The Domesday Survey puts before us the state of things in England as it was at the very beginning of the Norman and at the close of the Saxon period. The development of feudal society, of centralizing kingship and ultimately of a system of common law, brought about great changes which all hinge on the fundamental fact that the kings, while increasing the power of the state in other respects, surrendered it completely as regards the relations between the peasants and their lords. The protection of the assizes was tendered in civil matters to free tenants and refused to villeins. The royal courts refused to entertain suits of villeins against their lords, although there was a good deal of vacillation before this position was definitely taken up. Bracton still speaks in his treatise of the possibility for the courts to interfere against intolerable cruelty on the part of the lord involving the destruction of the villein's waynage, that is, of his plough team, and in the Notebook of Bracton there are a couple of cases which prove that 13th-century judges occasionally allowed themselves to entertain actions by persons holding in villeinage against their lords. Gradually, however, the exception of villeinage became firmly settled. As the historical and practical position was developing on these lines the lawyers who fashioned English common law in the 12th and 13th centuries did not hesitate to apply to it the teaching of Roman law on slavery, Bracton fits his definition of villeinage into the Romanesque scheme of Azo's Summa of the Institutes, and the judges of the royal courts made sweeping inferences from this general position. To begin with, the relation between the villein and his lord was regarded as a personal and not a praedial one. Everyone born of villein stock belonged to his master and was bound to undertake any service which might be imposed on him by the master's or the steward's command. The distinction between villeins in gross and villeins regardant, of which much is made by modern writers, was suggested by modes of pleading and does not make its appearance in the Year-Books before the 15th century. Secondly, all independent proprietary rights were denied to the villein as against his lord, and the legal rule “quicquid servo acquiritur domino acquiritur” was extended to villeins. The fact that a great number of these serfs had been enjoying protection as free ceorls in former ages made itself felt, however, in three directions. (1) In criminal matters the villein was treated by the King's Court irrespectively of any consideration as to his debased condition. More especially the police association, organized for the keeping of the peace and the presentation of criminals—the frank pledge groups were formed of all “worthy of were and wite,” villeins as well as freemen. (2) Politically the villeins were not eliminated from the body of citizens: they had to pay taxes, to serve in great emergencies in the militia, to serve on inquests, &c., and although there was a tendency to place them on a lower footing in all these respects yet the fact of their being lesser members of the commonwealth did not remove the fundamental
