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^H i iMM &i a t F j g ltl

THE CHARACTER OF VILLEIN TENURE/

Students of Economic History have of late years
begun to awake to the fact that during the period of the
Tudors, and over a considerable area of England, there
took place an agrarian revolution which altered the whole
aspect of country life. This revolution was the substitu-
tion of pasture for tillage, of pasture with large and enclosed
farms for tillage on the old intermixed or open-field system.
Its significance we still further appreciate when we notice
that, after a time, the new generation of farmers set-
tled down to what is known as a " convertible husbandry."
To devote their lands continuously to sheep-breeding did
not turn out quite so profitable as was at first expected ;
and it was seen to be expedient to plough up the pasture
every few years for a harvest or two. What took place at
this time in England was, accordingly, only the English
phase of the great movement from open-field tillage to
enclosed convertible husbandry, which manifested itself
during the same or a somewhat later period over a large
part of Western Europe.

I propose in this paper to deal with but a part of this
revolution, and that in only one of its aspects. It has been
recently said by an eminent writer,^ that while there is
plenty of work still to be dc^ on earlier social history, for
this middle period Httlr > can be desired. Its main

features, we are told, are a. . uy quite clear ; the materials
necessary for the student's purpose have been printed, and
are easily accessiblf^. But as soon as we begin to look

' A paper read before the Economic Section of the British Association at its
Leeds Meeting, September 5, 1890.

' Sir Frederick Pollock, in a paper on " Early Landholding," in Macmillan's
Magazine. For April, 1890.

(412)

Tim Character ok Villein Tenure.

413

more minutely into the accounts of the matter which are to
be found in our usual authorities, we discover that this is
somewhat too contented a view. For— to mention but one
reason for misgiving— it maybe doubted whether we have
yet quite incorporated into our current thoughts the picture
of media:val husbandry which we owe to Mr. Scebohm.
Or rather, though we may have grasped the manorial or-
ganization of the thirteenth century, when we get to Tudor
times we are apt somehow to imagine that we are in the
world of to-day. " Farm " and " Field " and " Tenant "
sound as if we knew all about them ; the chief difference
that occurs to us is that there were a good many more
small farmers than there are now ; and we make them
picturesque by calling them "yeomen." But when we
come to read the documents of the sixteenth century, we
hardly get beyond the well-worn quotation about Latimer's
father— which everybody must be heartily sick of by this
time— without suspecting that familiar terms did not ex-
actly denote then what they denote now. Tedious as it
may be, we have to go back to the rudiments— the manor
and its constituent parts : first the land in demesne, culti-
vated bv the lord or his bailiff for the lord's use ; then the
land in freehold; then, and most important, the land in vil-
leinage or "customary" tenure; next, the separate pasture
closes; next, the meadows; and lastly, the common pasture
and waste. The organization of rural society had become
much more complicated since the thirteenth century ; the
frequent partitions of manors, on the one side, and the oc-
cupation of villein or customary holdings by men of posi-
tion and wealth, on the other, had gone far to destroy the
symmetry of the manorial system. Yet modern history is
much more mediaeval than we suppose. Our only safe
course is to take the normal manor for our guide; and
when we are told, for instance, of a case of " enclosure,"
to ask, which of these diverse elements of the manor did
it affect, and by what means was it able to affect them ?

Bl-

/i4

'[•

.< I.

414

Annals of the American Academy.

According as we answer these questione must we conceive
of the social consequences of the particular change.

Each of the various ways in which the new sheep-farming
was introduced needs to be investigated afresh ; and \ye
may well begin with that which was most far-reaching in its
consequences— the removal from the soil of the customary
tenants.

It is hardly necessary to explain that the kernel of the
mediceval manor was a group of teuants, called in earlier
times vti/cins, and known in the fifteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies as customary tenants and copyholders. These copy-
holders did not hold their arable lands in continuous
stretches, in considerable pieces, such as we noiv call
" fields," grouped round a farm-house ; they held them in
a number of acre or half-acre strips, scattered over the two
or three enormous areas, each some hundreds of acres in
size, then known as "the fields." In earlier times no
villein had more than from twenty to fifty (usually thirty)
of these acres ; and no two .strips held by one man were
contiguous : and, although a good deal of consolidation
had since taken place, the customary holdings were still as
a rule small, and held in scattered pieces. But if sheep-
farming was to be introduced instead of tillage, it was
necessary that the great stretches of " fields " should be,
partially at least, hedged or fenced in ; and the open acres
of corn, oats, or fallow superseded by pasture. And this
did actually take place to a very considerable extent. But
here a distinction has to be drawn. In the period from the
accession of Elizabeth to the middle of the seventeenth
century — when the agrarian revolution .stopped for a time,
to be renewed a hundred years later— during that period
enclosures were usually effected with the consent of all the
land-holders concerned. The result, so far as regards the
tenants, was only that they now obtained, instead of some
thirty scattered strips, which they had been obliged to cul-
tivate in a particular way, four or five fields of six or seven
acres each, which they were free henceforward to employ

The Character of Villein Tenure.

415

as they pleased. Even these enclosures had further and
less satisfactory consequences, so far as other classes of the
agricultural population were concerned ; though on these
w'e cannot now dwell. But in the earlier part of the
same movement, during the period which may be roughly
defined as from 145010 1550, enclosure meant to a large
extent the actual dispossession of the copyhold or cus-
tomary tenants by their manorial lords. This took place
either in the form of the violent ousting of the sitting
tenant, or of a refusal on the death of one tenant to admit
the son, who in earlier centuries would have been treated
as his natural successor. Proofs abound ; there is, for in-
stance, the well-known passage in More's Utopia : " That
on covetous and unsatiable cormoraunte .... maye
compasse aboute and inclose many thousand akers of
grounde together within one pale or hedge, the hus-
bandmen be thrust owte of their owne, or els either by
coueyne and fraude, or by violent oppression they be put
besydes it, or by wrongs and iniuries they be so weried
that they be compelled to sell all." '

Now the question which I wish especially to raise is
this : What was the contemporary legal theory as to the
position of the majority of customary tenants, and what
was the practical effect of the theory ? It is usually held
that, whatever may have been the original insecurity of the
villein's position, his successor had by this time arrived at
a security of tenure guaranteed by law ; so that when a
lord ousted a customary tenant he knew he was violating
the law, and trusted to the man's ignorance, or poverty, or
fear, to escape its enforcement. It is sometimes granted
that the law may not have been quite clear, but it is implied
that, even if this were the case, that the lords did not know
it. Both positions seem to me questionable, especially the

> Ralph Robinson's translation, in Arber's Reprint, p. 41. Moore's own Latin
text runs " cjiciuntur co/ani quidam suis." As to the nature of the clearances,
see also Bacon, Hist, of Hon, VU. (Uohn ed. p. 359), and Select Works of
Crowley (E. E.T.S.) p. 12a.

416

Annals of the American .Academv.

first. No doubt the dispossession of the tenants was re-
garded by the tenants themselves and by most observers
as a violation of customary right; no doubt also many
tenants were evicted by the strong hand, the term of whose
tenure was such that they could have maintained them-
selves had they been able to go to law. But I hope to be
able to show that, so far as the mass of copyhi^lders were
concerned, they had, at the beginning of the period, no
legal security ; that the lords knew this and acted upon it;
and that the government knew it and were influenced by
it. It follows from this that the law as we find it toward
the end of the period in Coke, which does give the cus-
tomary tenant a security of tenure, must be regarded as
itself the product of the Sturm tind Drang of the preceding
century and a half

There was a time, we can hardly doubt, when the great
body of villeins all over the Midland and Southern coun-
ties^ held their lands on much the same terms, whatever
these may have been. But with the growth of royal courts
of justice, and of a body of professional lawyers, distinc-
tions came to be drawn between the tenure of this or that
villein, this or that district. All their holdings were still
nominally "at the will of the lord," "ad voluntatem
domini,"— a phrase which must surely have meant what it
says at some time.^ But some were now expressly " for
life," " ad vitam " ; while other customary tenants, still more
fortunate, held "to themselves and their heirs."' The

» This limit.Uion is added to avoid the necessity of considering for the present
the peculiar tenures of some parts of Ealern and Western England.

» There seems no reason, if we put aside the unproved " mark theory," why
we should not agree with what Coke says in the matter, especially as he seems to
point to a survival of the earlier conditions as cxi't ng in his own time: " These
tenants in their birth, n.f wcUat the Customary Tcnuhts upon the Borders of Scot-
land who have the name of Tcin.nts.W'CKC mere T»nants at will ; and tliough
they kept the Customs inviolate, yet the Lord might, s.^ns control!, eject them."
—Complete Copyholder. Sec. 32, cd. i663, p. O7.

8 This isfound as e.irly as ry<S, e.g., in a surrender of that date, " ad opus
Martini ct Aliciae uxoris ejus et hercdum suorum, tenrdum in vilenagio, ad vol-
untatem domini," in Cressingham Court Rolls, priv. printed by H. W. Chandler,
1885, p. 18.

W \

■^1

:s was re-
observers
so many
of whose
ed them-
ope to be
Icrs were
period, no
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lenced by
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jarded as
preceding

the great
ern coun-
whatever
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were still
oluntatem
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or the present
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as he seems to
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'rders of Scot-
l ; and tliough
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ate, " ad opus
magic, nd vol-
W. Chandler,

The Character of Villein Tenuke.

417

very use of the term "for life" implies an understanding
that when the life expired the lord could do with the land
as he pleased. It may have been usual to put in the son
or other heir of the previous tenant; but tlie lord was
under no legal obligation to do so; and as soon as the
point was raised, in 1607, the judges held that an alleged
custom to compel the lord to admit in such cases was void.'
On the other hand, where a grant had been made to a man
and his heirs, if the lord refused seisin to the heir he could
hardly fail to know that he was doing what was illegal;
though, even in this case, the aggrieved heir was denied
access to the royal courts down to as late a period as 146S.
He could only proceed by way of petition, in the court of
the manor, where we can scarcely suppose he was sure of
finding justice.

Most customary tenants, however, were probably still
admitted to the occupation of land without any such speci-
fication of the duration of their holdings. If, under such
circumstances, the lord determined to take the land back
again into his own hands, it looks as if the law as it stood
in 1450 would be upon his side. The two cases of dispos-
session of a sitting tenant and of refusal to admit the son
or other heir of a previous tenant are, of course, distinct,
and need separate examination. But the violation of gen-
eral sentiment would be much the same in either case;
the lord's power in either case was, as I conceive it, much
the same; and our evidence includes both, so that for the
present they may be taken together.

For our first piece of evidence we must go some way
back, but it is worth paying some attention to. It is an
account of the politic action of a certain Abbot of Abing-
don, at the end of the eleventh century. We are told by

1 Lord Gray's Case, before tlie Star Chambor, 4 Jac. \. " Us claime un custome
que puis le inort le tenant pur vie d'un copyliold, le Seignior est compellable do
faire un auter estate pur vi- ul eigne fits or fillc sil n'ad fiis, ct sic in perpetuura
. . . Pur le custome les 2 Justices Popham et Cook semblont cfo destre
encount' le Ley." — Cases Collect, etc., per Sr Francis Moore, zd ed., 1675, p.
788, pi. 1088.

4i8

Annals oi- thk Ami:rican Academy.

( !

the chonicler that " on the estates of the monastery it was
held to be the law that one tenant could get the consent
of the reeve by a bribe, and expel another from his house;
and that, when a tenant died who had held a fertile piece
of land, a man might, by means of a bribe, get himself
admitted, without any compensation being given to the
wife or sons of the late tenant' As the Abbot wanted
money for his buildings, he arranged with the tenants that
these fj^evances should be removed in return for certain
payments. It does not seem likely that such a condition
of things as the chronicler describes would be found only
on the manors of one particular monastery; and if we
suppose that it existed in other parts of the country, it
is fair to conjecture that it would be long before it disap-
peared.

When we get down to the period of text-books, we find
Glanvill, at the end of the next century, describing the
villein as absolutely devoid of all rights of property. Even
if we consider his doctrine of villeinage to have received
its color from Roman law, and to have been in some meas-
ure irrelevant to the actual life of the time, it cannot have
been without influence on the mind of lawyers as soon as
questions of villein tenure came before the courts.^ Such

' The text is obscure, but this seems to be its meaning; " Pro lege per ab-
batiae loca rusticis deputabatur, ut quislibet eorum, cui vel invidia vel cupiJitas
alterius adipisci rem inerat, praeposili inipleta manu mercaturae beneficio, posset
aJium tie sua mansione expellere. Item ct aliud plebeiorum incommodum. Cum
aliquis filios et uxorom habens, et agrorum fortunatus frugiferorum, domino suo
jura inoffense persolveret, ct is debito fine quiesceret, nuila filiis vel uxori ejus
gratia rependebatur, sed Ulis cjectis, in defuncti lucrationibus cxtraneus data
pecunia inducebatur." — Chron. de Abingdon (Rolls Series), ii. p. 25. I am in-
debted for this reference to an article by the Rev. E. A. Fuller in Proc. Bristol
and Glouc. Arch. Soc, 1877-8. It is perhaps not necessary fjr the present argu-
ment to consider earlier evidence ; but it may be noticed that in t!ie Rectitudines
Singularum Personarum it is laid down that when the gebur dies his lord is to
take possession of all he leaves. The I^tin version, which is probably of tlie 12th
century, and which clearly identifies the gebur with the virgariiis, runs '• Si mor-
tem cheat, rehabeat dominus suus omnia." Schmid, Gesetzc der Angelsachsen,

P 375-

' It would seem, to judge from the " Persones Tale of Chaucer," that tlie legal
theory which treated the villeins as incapable of property had not been forgotten.

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The Chaka ter of Villein Tenure. 4:9

a case is presented to us in 1280. In that /ear the Abbot
of Burt(Mi, annoyed by some proceedings wliich his villeins
of Mickleover had ventured to bring against him in the
royal courts, proceeded to evict them all, and to seize their
cattle. The sheriff" sent a writ for the restoration of the
cattle, but it was never obeyed ; and when some of the
tenants brought an action for theft, the Abbot boldly an-
swered that, being villeins, nothing was their own but their
bellies; and they could get no remedy. Apparently it
never occurred to the sheriff" to order the restoration of
their tenements; and although they were finally reinstated
on paying heavy fines and acknowledging themselves to
be " serfs at the will of their lord," it was of the Abbot's
free grace — because, in fact, he wanted his lands cultivated,
and knew no other way to secure that end.'

Some ten years after the date of these proceedings the
text-book known by the name of Britton was compiled,
and it speedily became the most widely used of le^-al
authorities.^ In this work a distinction is drawn between
villeins on the ancient estates of the crown, and villeins
on the estates of the lords. The former, it tells us, " are
privileged in this manner, that they are not to be ousted
from such tenements so long as they perform the services
which appertain to their tenements." But with the latter
" villeinage is a tenement . . . delivered to be held
at the will of the lord by villein services "; and to make
it clear, that " at the will of the lord " is no empty phrase,
he returns to the villeins on royal demesne, and adds
(speaking in the person of the king), "And even in the

even toward the end of the 14th century. Thus the parson says {De Avaritia^
that "som lordes stewards," justify unreasonable amercements, " for as moclie as
a cherl hath no temporel thing, that it ne is his lordes, as they say " ; and he at-
. tempts later to meet the argument that " the lawe sayeth that temporel goodes of
bondfolk ben the goodes of hir lord."

' An abstract of the documents is given in Staffordshire Collections, v. p. 82.
» I purposely omit all reference to Bracton. So long as we are without a
critical edition, and unable to distinguish Bracton's text from later accretions, it
is possible to support by his authority almost any opinion as to villein tenure.

4-0

Annal.s of the American Academy.

manors of the ancient demesnes there are pure villeins
both by blood and tenure, who may be ousted from their
tenements and deprived of their chattels at the will of
the lord."'

With the next century the position is changed by the
oft-recurring plague. Instead of ousting tenants, lords of
land found it hard enough to retain them, even with light-
ened services. We can readily understand that during
such a period the custom of tenant-right would tend to
become law; and we might anticipate that when the ques-
tion came to be raised once more, undc the Lancastrian
and Yorkist kings, the attitude of lawyers would be dif-
ferent. And accordingly we find Littleton, who writes in
1475, expressing himself as follows : " Although that some
such tenants have an inheritance according to the custom
of the manor, yet they have but an estate but at the will
of the lord, according to the course of common law. For
it is said that if the lord do oust them, they have no other
remedy but to sue to their lord by petition. . . . But
the lord cannot break the custom which is reasonable in
these cases." This was the unsatisfactory position in
which the law was left in a text-book of great repute,
which was speedily printed and passed through several
editions : a vague declaraticfn that the lord must not break
a reasonable custom, with no explanation what " reason-
able " meant, or how the custom was to be enforced.

In the text of Littleton, as commented upon by Coke,
appears, indeed, the following addition, which has become

1 Ed. Nichols, 1865, ii. p. 13. Coke in bis Commentary on Littleton, 61 n,
makes a most iinwarrantable use of the passage here cited concerning villeins on
ancient demesne. Referring to what Littleton says of customary tenants gen-
erally, he adds : " Britton speakins; of these kind of tenants sailh thus " ; when
clearly Britton regards those of whom he speaks as occupying an exceptional
position. Oddly enough, in his Complete Copyholder, p. 67, Coke justly refers
to Britton as confirming his opinion of tenure at will. As to the dilTerence de-
scribed by Britton between the privileged villeins on royal demesne, and all other
villeins, the key to it may perhaps be found in the similar difference between the
colon i and ser-i.'i in the later days of the Roman Empire. See Fustel de Coulanges,
L'AUeu et le Domaine Rural, pp. 55, 71.

TlIK ClIARACTKK OF ViLLEIN TlCNUKE. 42I

a locus classiais: "But Brian, chief justice, said that his
opinion hath always been, and ever shall be. that if such
tenant by custom paying his - : vices be ejected by the
lord, he shall have an actir " of trespass against him, H.
2 1 Ed. IV. And so was the opinion of Danby, chief justice,
in 7 Ed. IV. For he saith that tenant by the custom is as
well inheritor to have his land according to the custom, as
he which hath a freehold at the common law." But it is
significant that this passage does not appear either in an
edition of Littleton, printed about the year of his death,
or in the issues of Pynson, in 15 16 and 1525. It occurs
for the first time in the edition of Redmayne, in 1530.
What this would seem to indicate is, that the point of law
was even in 1 5 30 not yet absolutely determined. We may
fairly conjecture that the editor of that year shared in the
general indignation which the evictions excited, and that
he disinterred a couple of forgotten dicta half a century
old, and gave them a place in what had become an estab-
lished text-book. It does not follow from their appearing
where they are. that during all that half century these
dicta had been well-settled law. The very form of Brian's
opinion— which, it will be noticed, is ascribed to as late a
date as 14S2, and concerns what we should regard as the
most extreme display of arbitrary power, the ejectment of
an actual tenant— marks it as personal and as consciously
opposed to a general belief: " his opinion hath always been
and ever shall he"^

Some light may be thrown on these utterances i;f Yorkist
judges by a consideration of the position of the Yorkist
government. The Lancastrian rule had received the sup-
port of the landed gentry : the Yorkists were the party of
the towns and of the lower classes. When we find that
the precisely similar eviction of peasants which went on
in many parts of Germany in the sixteenth century was

» In the law-French original; " Mes Brian chiefe justice dit, que son opinion
ad touts foits este, et enquez serra, si tie! tenant per le custome, etc."— Co. Litt.,
60 b.

422

Annals of the A^ierican Academy,

only prevented from running Its full course because the
princes, for their own interests, interfered to hinder it,' it
does not seem extravagant to ascribe to the Yorkist gov-
ernment, and the judges as part of it, a desire to modify
the law in such a way as to increase their own popularity,
and weaken their enemies the squirearchy. How far they
succeeded is an altogether different matter.

That the Yorkist judgments did but little to stem the
current of change is manifest from what took place in later
reigns. Among the most detailed pieces of information
which we possess is a return made in 1517 by the Com-
missioners of Inquest appointed in that year.^ Many of
the entries simply run as follows: "That A B, knight {or
gentleman, or clerk) has enclosed and put in pasture so
many acres in the vill (or township) of C, which were
under tillage during the period of the commission." We
are told nothing as to the tenure of the land in question.
But it is observable that the areas are generally either 30
acres or fractions or multiples of 30 ; so that they probably
represent wholes or portions of virgates — the ordinary
customary holding.^ Another series of entries run : "A
B has in the vill of C a tenement with so many acres
{e. g., 20, 25, 37, 40) of land, which were in tillage since
the time of the commission ; and now that tenement is
fallen, and the land is turned to pasture." This looks like
the evidence of a customary tenant, who still says he " has "
the land, though his acres have been taken away from him.
In one such instance we even find the phrase " a certain
person has enclosed thcni " ; a hint which the witness was
perhaps too frightened to explain.* More interesting still,

1 Roscher, Geschichte der National Ockonomik, pp. J22-3.

* Brit. Mus., Lansdowne MSS., i. p. 153. A very short and imperfect abstract
is given at the end of the second volume of Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik.
I hope soon to be .ible to print the whole.

' Thus, among the first few cases lire 6q acres, 30, Co, 22 (= y^ virgate?) ; and
later, in 5 vills following one another, we have 120, 60, 60, 60, 43.

* In Uaughboys Magna, in Hund. Harpyngham, Co. Norf : " Stephanus Bolt
habet iinutn tenementum cum xl acris terrae, de quibus quidam xl acras inclusit.

'>w«wrwBW-

The Character of Villein Tenure.. 433

in one or two cases we get glimpses of wholesale evictions.
Thus, " within the vill of Choysell the houses aforetime
of John Willyers are laid waste, and the inhabitants have
departed ; and there pertain to the said houses 300 acres
of land, whereof 30 are (now ?) arable, and the rest are in
pasture. And the houses of Burton Lazars in the same
vill are laid waste, and the inhabitants have departed; and
there belong to the same houses 300 acres of land, whereof
40 are (still ?) ploughed,, but the rest are in pasture : and by
this downfall the church has fallen into ruins."^

Instances of this kind show us that the language of the
statutes concerning " the pulling down and destruction of
toiuns," so that where once two hundred persons had been
employed," there were now but two or three herdsmen, is
no exaggeration, but a sober description of what had
really taken place. And yet the Acts never imply that
these evictions were in violation of the rights of the tenants.
They lay down that " houses of husbandry " ought to be
maintained, on the ground that it is desirable that men
should find employment; but they never provide means
by which the copyholders could enforce their legal rights,
if they had any. The natural explanation would seem to
be that they had none.

My conclusion, then, is this: Of late years our concep-
tions of mediaeval history have been unduly colored by a
theory which, as we are now finding, has yet to be proved
— the theory, namely, that the group of customary tenants
represent an originally free " mark " community, and that
the powers of lords of manors are so many encroachments

et posuit ad pasturam xii acras quae fuerunt in cultura post tempus comtnissionis,
et tenementum illuil ticcidit."

• It may be well to give the text of the second paragraph : " Item Mansiones
de Burton Lazars in villa predicta devastantur, et inhabitantes ibidem recesserunt ;
et spectant ad cadem mansiones ceo aerae terrae, quarum x arantur, rosiduae vero
in pastura ; et per docasum predictum ecclesia ibidem dccidit." We are not sur-
prised to find that according to the Imperial Gazetteer, Chosely has now but one
house and a population of seven.

• See especially 4 Hen. VII. c. 19, and 7 Henry VIII. c. i. Statutes of the Realm,
ii. p. 542; iii. p. 176.

424

Annals of the American Academy.

which have only acquired a legal authority during the
last five or six centuries. The proposition seems far more
tenable that, during historical times and until compara-
tively modern days, the cultivators of the soil were always
in a condition of serfdom, and held their lands at the arbi-
trary will of their lords. For centuries the lord knew no
other way of getting his land cultivated, and had no wish
to get rid of a tenant ; whenever he did so, it was alto-
gether exceptional. But with the tendency to limitation
and definition so characteristic of the feudal period, custom
tended to harden into law; and it was just on the point
of becoming law when a change in the economic situation,
the increasing advantage of pasture over tillage, prompted
the lords to fall back on their old rights. Then followed a
struggle between a legal theory becoming obsolete, but backed
by the influence of the landowners, and a custom on its
ivay to become law, backed by public sentiment and by the
policy of the Government.

Much the same tendencies were at work in other coun-
tries, especially in Germany. But there the sixteenth cen-
tury also witnessed a wide extension of the influence of
Roman law. The Roman law, with its sharply-defined
conception of property, came to the aid of the lords; and
this additional weight was just sufficient in many districts
to turn the balance. Thus, the Bavarian code of 1518
laid down that the peasant had no hereditary right to his
holding, and not even a life-interest unless he could show
some documentary evidence.' In Mecklenburg a decree of
1606 declared that the peasants were not evtphytcutae but
coloni, whom their lords could compel to give up the lands
allotted to them, and who could claim no right of inheri-
tance even when their ancestors had held the land from
time immemorial." In Holstein, again, a great number of
the peasants were expelled from their holdings, and such

• Roscher, «. s., pp. 82.

» Quoted in Bilguer, Liindliche Besitzverhaltnisse m Mecklenburg-Sdiwerin,
pp. 73 i from Boll, Mecklcnburgische Geschichte, p. 354.

«nMfMMir»«««lHuMtawMn^

Nt.f»0C»r»W>O|»'e«

The Character of Villein Tenure.

42s

•ing the
far more
ompara-
i always
the arbi-
knew no
no wish
ras alto-
mitation
I, custom
he point
situation,
rompted
illowed a
it backed
7« on its
d by the

ler coun-
snth cen-
uence of
y-defined
rds; and
■ districts
of 1518
bt to his
uld show
decree of
aitac but
the lands
jf inheri-
ind from
lumber of
and such

rg-Schwerin,

as remained became tenants at will.' In England, on the
contrary, custom and public sentiment and royal policy
had no such counteracting influence to contend with, and
the outcome of the contest was the law as we find it in
Coke. But even there, in many of Coke's phrases, we can
discern how recent and how severe the struggle had been.^
Before I sit down I should like to express the feeling
which, I am sure, from time to time comes over those who
are working at economic history. It is of how veiy little
we as yet know about it. I will not venture to discuss what
may be the value of historical work as an aid in handling
the problems of the present; nor to distinguish between
the half a dozen different things which are commonly con-
fused together under the name of "the historical method."
Our President, in the treatise we have all been reading, has
held out the olive branch,^ and even those whose general
position is most undeductive will do well do listen to his
overtures of peace. But he confesses that it is, after all,
very much a matter of temperament whether a man works
at economic history or economic theory.* Well, if a time
should ever come — I do not say it ought — when, after
puzzling over "final utility" and "disutility," it should,
even mistakenly, occur to anyone that the abstract method
scarcely gives him results sufficiently tangible to satisfy his
particular temperament, he will not do amiss to remember
that there is an alternative field of work. Putting it on
what some will regard as the lowest ground— the satisfac-
tion of intelligent curiosity — it is not worth while to try to
remove some part of the veil which still conceals from us
the life of our forefathers. W. J. Ashley.

University of Toronto.

• Hanssen, Agrarhistorische Abhandlungen, i. pp. 431-2.

' l^.g. " But NOW mai'istra rerum exjcrienua ^ath made this clear." Co.
Litt. 60 b : and such phrases as " Note that Littletcn alloweth, " etc., ii. 6a a,
63 b.

' Marshall, Principles of Economics, especially p. 70.
« Ibid., p. 93.