ion, but on the king's answer; so
that the commons were not real parties to it, and accordingly call it an
ordinance in their present petition. This naturally increased their
animosity in treating it as an infringement of the subject's right.

[397] Glanvil, 1. v. c. 5.

[398] According to Bracton, the bastard of a nief, or female villein,
was born in servitude; and where the parents lived on a villein
tenement, the children of a nief, even though married to a freeman, were
villeins, 1. iv. c. 21; and see Beames's translation of Glanvil, p. 109.
But Littleton lays down an opposite doctrine, that a bastard was
necessarily free; because, being the child of no father in the
contemplation of law, he could not be presumed to inherit servitude from
any one; and makes no distinction as to the parent's residence. Sect
188. I merely take notice of this change in the law between the reigns
of Henry III. and Edward IV. as an instance of the bias which the judges
showed in favour of personal freedom. Another, if we can rely upon it,
is more important. In the reign of Henry II. a freeman marrying a nief,
and settling on a villein tenement, lost the privileges of freedom
during the time of his occupation; legem terrae quasi nativus amittit.
Glanvil, 1. v. c. 6. This was consonant to the customs of some other
countries, some of which went further, and treated such a person for
ever as a villein. But, on the contrary, we find in Britton, a century
later, that the nief herself by such a marriage became free during the
coverture, c. 31. [Note XIII.]

[399] I must confess that I have some doubts how far this was law at the
epoch of Magna Charta. Glanvil and Bracton both speak of the _status
villenagii_, as opposed to that of liberty, and seem to consider it as a
civil condition, not a merely personal relation. The civil law and the
French treatise of Beaumanoir hold the same language. And Sir Robert
Cotton maintains without hesitation that villeins are not within the
29th section of Magna Charta, "being excluded by the word liber."
Cotton's Posthuma, p. 223. Britton, however, a little after Bracton,
says that in an action the villein is answerable to all men, and all men
to him. p. 79. And later judges, in favorem libertatis, gave this
construction to the villein's situation, which must therefore be
considered as the clear law of England in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.

[400] Littleton, sect. 189, 190, speaks only of an app