Villein

The wealthiest class of peasant. They usually cultivate 20-40 Acres of land, often in isolated strips.

A bondsman, a man bonded to the land that he worked. Villeins lived in villages, attached to a lord’s holdings, all but a slave. A lord who owned the land to which a villein was attached could do anything with him he pleased, save mutilation or killing him. Villeins had few rights, and only in rare circumstances were released from their bondage. Under Henry I, this ceremony had to be conducted in a public place such as in a church or marketplace, that many gained knowledge of the release and the villein, now a freeman, was not considered to have fled his feudal contract. A man was a villein if his father was a villein; only by the release of the lord could be ever be free.

Villeins held few rights, unable to fish in the lord’s rivers, to hunt or draw firewood from his forests, marry his daughter off without permission (and a fee, generally), or commit his son to Holy Orders.

♦ A non-free man, owing heavy labor service to a lord, subject to his manorial court, bound to the land, and subject to certain feudal dues.

(Gies, Joseph and Francis. Life in a Medieval Castle, 231)

♦ The highest class of dependent peasantry, often holding between 30 and 100 acres; above them were "freemen" and "sokemen".

(Wood, Michael. Domesday: A Search for the Roots of England, 214)

♦ Peasant bound to lord or estate; in England regarded as unfree from about 1200.

(Frame, Robin. Colonial Ireland, 1169-1369, 145)

♦ English term for serf.

(Gies, Frances and Joseph. Life in a Medieval Village, 246)

♦ In England, the holder of a villein tenement for which he usually owes agricultural services to his lord. The villein's rights in his tenement are customary and not enforeceable against his lord by medieval common law. Personally free against all men but his lord, the villein nevertheless does not fully enjoy the rights of a free man. He is a tenant at the will of the lord; he cannont serve on a jury dealing with the rights of a free man; he cannot take ecclesiastical orders with emancipation; he cannot make a will; if he leaves his duties on the lord's manor, the lord can use all necessary force to bring him back to perform them.

(Hogue, Arthur R. Origins of the Common Law, 258)

♦ A peasant who, by definitions established c. 1200, was unfree to the extent that, although not a chattel of his lord, he could not leave his holding and owed services for it which were limited only by custom and his lord's court, not by the royal courts.

(Reynolds, Susan. An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns, 200)