1. The holding of property through servitude to a feudal lord; a servile type of tenure in which a tenant was obliged to render base services to a lord. Cf. KNIGHT SERVICE; SOCAGE.
2. A villein’s status, condition, or service. — Also spelled villenage; villainage; villanage.
— Also termed villein tenure.
“The typical tenant in villeinage does not know in the evening what he will have to do in the morning…. [T]here is a large element of real uncertainty; the lord’s will counts for much; when they go to bed on Sunday night they do not know what Monday’s work will be; it may be threshing, ditching, carrying; they cannot tell. This seems the point that is seized by law and that general opinion of which law is the exponent: any considerable uncertainty as to the amount or kind of the agricultural services makes the tenure unfree. The tenure is unfree, not because the tenant ‘holds at the will of the lord,’ in the sense of being removable at a moment’s notice, but because his services, though in many respects minutely defined by custom, cannot be altogether defined without frequent reference to the lord’s will.” 1 Frederick Pollock & Frederic William Maitland, History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I 371 (2d ed. 1898).
“At the lower level the services were not always defined. The duties of the peasant were chiefly agricultural. If they were unfixed, so that the lord might in theory demand all manner of work, the tenure was ‘unfree’ and was called villeinage.” J.H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History 260 (3d ed. 1990).
privileged villeinage. Villeinage in which the services to be performed were certain, though of a base and servile nature.
pure villeinage. Villeinage in which the services were not certain, but the tenant was obliged to do whatever he was commanded whenever the command came.
