eral usage the words
_villanus_, _nativus_, _servus_, _custumarius_, and _rusticus_ are
synonymous, and the cotters belonged legally to the same servile
class.

The distinction between free tenants and villains, using this word, as
is customary, to include all those who were legally in servitude, was
not a very clearly marked one. Their economic position was often so
similar that the classes shaded into one another. But the villain was,
as has been seen, usually burdened with much heavier services. He was
subject to special payments, such as "merchet," a payment made to the
lord of the manor when a woman of villain rank was married, and
"leyr," a payment made by women for breach of chastity. He could be
"tallaged" or taxed to any extent the lord saw fit. He was bound to
the soil. He could not leave the manor to seek for better conditions
of life elsewhere. If he ran away, his lord could obtain an order from
a court and have him brought back. When permission was obtained to
remain away from the manor as an inhabitant of another vill or of a
town, it was only upon payment of a periodical sum, frequently known
as "chevage" or head money. He could not sell his cattle without
paying the lord for permission. He had practically no standing in the
courts of the country. In any suit against his lord the proof of his
condition of villainage was sufficient to put him out of court, and
his only recourse was the local court of the manor, where the lord
himself or his representative presided. Finally, in the eyes of the
law, the villain had no property of his own, all his possessions
being, in the last resort, the property of his lord. This legal
theory, however, apparently had but little application to real life;
for in the ordinary course of events the customary tenant, if only by
custom, not by law, yet held and bequeathed to his descendants his
land and his chattels quite as if they were his own.

Serfdom, as it existed in England in the thirteenth century, can
hardly be defined in strict legal terms. It can be described most
correctly as a condition in which the villain tenant of the manor was
bound to the locality and to his services and payments there by a
legal bond, instead of merely by an economic bond, as was the case
with the small free tenant.

There were commonly a few persons in the vill who were not in the
general body of cultivators of the land and were not therefore in the
classes so far described. Since the vil