stices of gaol delivery, the
commons petitioned next year against this "horrible grievous ordinance,"
by which "every freeman in the kingdom would be in bondage to these
justices," contrary to the great charter, and to many statutes, which
forbid any man to be taken without due course of law.[396] So sensitive
was their jealousy of arbitrary imprisonment, that they preferred
enduring riot and robbery to chastising them by any means that might
afford a precedent to oppression, or weaken men's reverence for Magna
Charta.

There are two subjects remaining to which this retrospect of the state
of manners naturally leads us, and which I would not pass unnoticed,
though not perhaps absolutely essential to a constitutional history;
because they tend in a very material degree to illustrate the progress
of society, with which civil liberty and regular government are closely
connected. These are, first, the servitude or villenage of the
peasantry, and their gradual emancipation from that condition; and,
secondly, the continual increase of commercial intercourse with foreign
countries. But as the latter topic will fall more conveniently into the
next part of this work, I shall postpone its consideration for the
present.

[Sidenote: Villenage of the peasantry. Its nature and gradual
extinction.]

In a former passage I have remarked of the Anglo-Saxon ceorls that
neither their situation nor that of their descendants for the earlier
reigns after the Conquest appears to have been mere servitude. But from
the time of Henry II., as we learn from Glanvil, the villein, so called,
was absolutely dependent upon his lord's will, compelled to unlimited
services, and destitute of property, not only in the land he held for
his maintenance, but in his own acquisitions.[397] If a villein
purchased or inherited land, the lord might seize it; if he accumulated
stock, its possession was equally precarious. Against his lord he had no
right of action; because his indemnity in damages, if he could have
recovered any, might have been immediately taken away. If he fled from
his lord's service, or from the land which he held, a writ issued de
nativitate probanda, and the master recovered his fugitive by law. His
children were born to the same state of servitude; and, contrary to the
rule of the civil law, where one parent was free and the other in
villenage, the offspring followed their father's condition.[398]

This was certainly a severe lot; yet t