Vills and Villeins

The Kingdom of England

The realm of England was divided into administrative and judicial districts called shires [counties] each overseen by a royal officer knowns as a sheriff [shire reeve]. The shires themselves were subdivided into smaller units called hundreds [sometimes in different counties called wapentakes or even lathes or rapes]. Hundreds themselves in turn were divided into vills.

Within each vill all adult males [those aged over 12] were enrolled into smaller groups known as tithings, a group pledged to mutual accountability.. Under the system of frankpledge, each tithing was individually responsible for the discipline of the members of its constituent households [hearths] and their keeping of the King’s Peace. Under William the Conqueror all tithings were compulsorily made to adopt this frankpledge system.


Vill - Hull Domesday Project

Anglo-Saxon_law: The_preservation_of_peace

hides - Hull Domesday Project

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankpledge

The Frankpledge System : Morris, William Alfred,-  Internet Archive

A tithing originally meant a grouping of households in an area comprising a land area of of about ten hides. The heads of each of those households were referred to as tithingmen [assumed to be all adult males aged over 12. Each tithingman was responsible for the actions and behaviour of all the members in the tithing, under the collective system of responsibility known as frankpledge.

Fundamental Axiom of Feudalism in England

Nulle terre sans seigneur

No land without a lord.
No property [land] without a liege.

Homage and Fealty

Adam Lucas (2016). Ecclesiastical Lordship, Seigneurial Power and the Commercialization of Milling in Medieval England. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-14647-6.

Vills and Villeins

The Vill in Medieval England
Author: Warren O. Ault
Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 126, No. 3 (Jun. 8, 1982), pp. 188-211
Published by: American Philosophical Society
https://www.jstor.org/stable/986507

A manor, normally, was a single estate comprising both the demesne lands of the lord and those of his tenants, and his hall of residence, the manor house. If all the inhabitants of a vill were tenants of the same lord, vill and manor coincided, and they would have the same name. But a vill could comprise more than one manor each with its own lord, and some larger manors could comprise several vills. Manors and vills [villa and manorium] were different things. A manor had a court, a village moot, an assembly of the tenants, where they were required to perform service due to the lord of the manor and fulfill their obligations to each other. Vills had no such court, unless they were also a manor.

Medieval society was largely agricultural and its wealth and power were tied to the productivity of the land and its possession. The Vill was the smallest geographical, agricultural and administrative unit of habitation under the feudal system. It was a term that was used in the Domesday Book to describe such a productive entity, an enterprise overseen by its landlord. A Vill was roughly the size of an ecclesiastical parish and often coterminous with one. A Vill was the Norman-French translation of the Latin word, Villa (pl. Villae) or Anglo-Saxon place naming -ton or tun (township or enclosed piece of land), settlements which consisted of a number of houses and their adjacent fields. Today we might call a vill a village, and the larger ones a township. The inhabitants of a vill were called villeins (Latin villani). Technically in legal parlance villeins were serfs tied to the land in the feudal system - peasant tenant farmers in bond to a lord of a manor. Villeins had more rights and status than those held in slavery, but were held in servitude under a number of legal restrictions which differentiated them from freemen.

Vills, as settlements, were frequently set up and organised by their lords of the manor [lordships] when wanted their people, those who owed service to them for their lands, more closely grouped together around their manor houses, rather than living in remote farmsteads, so that the villains could easily and directly service the lands of their lord's demesnes.

There are some 15,000 to 18,000 places with place names recorded in the counties of the Domesday Book (1086). If each place name represented one Manor (or Vill) this would mean each had an average population of around 100 persons.

David Bates (July 2012). Anglo-Norman Studies XXXIV: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2011. The Invention of the Manor in Norman England by C. P. Lewis: Boydell Press. pp. 123–150. ISBN 978-1-84383-735-0.

Mick Aston; Dr. Christopher Gerrard (7 February 2013). Interpreting the English Village: Landscape and Community at Shapwick, Somerset. Windgather Press. ISBN 978-1-909686-06-9.

Frederic Seebohm. The English Village Community Examined in Its Relation to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common Or Open Field System of Husbandry: An Essay in Economic History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-03634-4.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.47889/page/n11

J.H. Round Feudal England. BoD – Books on Demand. ISBN 978-3-7326-7588-3.
https://archive.org/details/cu31924014477271/page/n8

Bloomsbury Publishing (1995). Essays in Anglo-Saxon History. Chapter 6 - Bede's Words for Places: Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 99–. ISBN 978-0-8264-2573-7.
F. W. Maitland (1987). Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-34918-5.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.503278/page/n5

H. C. Darby; Henry Clifford Darby (1986). Domesday England. Chapter II: Rural Settlements: Cambridge University Press. pp. 15–. ISBN 978-0-521-31026-0.

N. J. Higham; Martin J. Ryan (2011). Place-names, Language and the Anglo-Saxon Landscape. Boydell Press. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-1-84383-603-2.

N. J. Higham; Martin J. Ryan (2010). The Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 1–. ISBN 978-1-84383-582-0.

Alexander Mansfield Burrill (1998). A New Law Dictionary and Glossary Vill The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. pp. 1040–. ISBN 978-1-886363-32-8.

Alexander Mansfield Burrill (1998). A New Law Dictionary and Glossary Villanus The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. pp. 1041–. ISBN 978-1-886363-32-8.

Archaeologia, Or, Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity. XXX: On the Political Condition of the English Peasantry during the Middle Ages: The Society. 1844. pp. 205–.

Thomas Percy (1868). Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances. On Bondman: the name and the class by F.J. Furnivall: N. Trübner & Company. pp. xxix–lviii.
https://archive.org/stream/bishoppercysfoli02percuoft/bishoppercysfoli02percuoft_djvu.txt


Royal Vills or Kingstun [villa regalis]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_vill

The royal vill was where the feorm or food-rent was received by the man who was in charge of the royal vill and its estate for the king, the royal ealdorman or reeve. It was the royal reeve who was responsible for the revenue collection of the feorm at the royal vill and whose duties also combined administrative functions of organising the moot for the hundred in which it was the centre whether as a general assembly or as a local court. Royal reeves evolved later under Norman rule into shire reeves or sheriffs responsible for collecting taxes.

Situated in each royal vill typically was a monastery or minster which may have been sponsored by the king . Described as “England garrisoned with spiritual burhs”, the minster served a territory of jurisdiction identical to that administered by the royal ealdorman or reeve. In effect the Church helped to enforce royal power geographically. In its turn the Church sponsored kingship as it was the ideal model of rule as described in the Bible. The Church in England [especially in Southern England] was a mission from Rome. Minster churches [monasteries] were the centres of missionary work promulgating Christianity organised by the monks. Later the minster system of organising the Church was replaced by the diocesan system.

Hector Munro Chadwick (1963). Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions. Adminstrative System: The King's Reeve: CUP Archive. pp. 228–.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minster_(church)

Robert A. Dodgshon; Robin A. Butlin (2013). Historical Geography of England and Wales. Elsevier. pp. 58–. ISBN 978-1-4832-8841-3.

Andrew Galloway (2011). The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Culture. Chapter 4: Cambridge University Press. pp. 87–. ISBN 978-1-107-49520-3.

Encyclopaedia Britannica: 11th Edition. My Ebook Publishing House. pp. 458–. ISBN 978-606-8846-00-2.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:EB1911_-_Volume_04.djvu/611

Pounds N. J. G. (2000). A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria. Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–. ISBN 978-0-521-63351-2.

Rosamond Faith (1999). The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship. A&C Black. pp. 8–. ISBN 978-0-7185-0204-1.

Barbara Yorke (2002). Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. Routledge. pp. 8–. ISBN 978-1-134-70725-6.

Stephen Rippon (2012). Making Sense of an Historic Landscape. OUP Oxford. pp. 152–. ISBN 978-0-19-953378-7.

Stephen Driscoll; John Hunter; Ian Ralston (16 December 2009). The Archaeology of Britain: An Introduction from Earliest Times to the Twenty-First Century. Chapter 14 Landscapes: Routledge. pp. 305–. ISBN 978-1-135-18958-7.

References

http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/structure-of-domesday-book/countyhttp://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/data-terminology/administrative-units/shire

http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/structure-of-domesday-book/vill

http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/structure-of-domesday-book/fief
http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/structure-of-domesday-book/manor
http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/structure-of-domesday-book/hundred

http://www.domesdaybook.net/domesday-book/data-terminology/administrative-units/castlery

Manors

Paul Vinogradoff (31 October 2010). The Growth of the Manor. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-01450-2.
https://archive.org/details/growthofmanor0000vino_z3h5

Hyams, Paul R. “The Proof of Villein Status in the Common Law.” The English Historical Review, vol. 89, no. 353, 1974, pp. 721–749. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/566397. 

Hilton, R. H. “Freedom and Villeinage in England.” Past & Present, no. 31, 1965, pp. 3–19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/650099.

Hatcher, John. “English Serfdom and Villeinage: Towards a Reassessment.” Past & Present, no. 90, 1981, pp. 3–39. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/650715. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villein

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor
Harold J. Berman (June 2009). Law and Revolution, the Formation of the Western Legal Tradition. Harvard University Press. pp. 440–. ISBN 978-0-674-02085-6 http://bit.ly/2WqLR0C


Dr Barbara Yorke (2002). Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. Routledge. pp. 21–. ISBN 978-1-134-70724-9.

Manors

A Vill Iis a geographical area whereas the word manor implies properly the jurisdiction exercised by a lord over the inhabitants of one or more vills. A vill would typically be a parish. Indeed the inhabitants of a vill might owe service to more than one lord.


There is a geographic centre to a manor, the manor house; the word manor was applied especially from an early date to the dwelling-place of the lord to whom service was due. It was the house where taxes [geld] were paid, and where the lord's courts were held.


During the Anglo-Saxon period, what we know as the manorial system had come into being as an economic fact. The estate held by a lord was the economic unit of landed property. In the vill which was at  the centre of that estate there was the lord's house, and, side by side with it, the church which he had built for the use of his tenants and of which he was the patron or advocate. Round these two buildings were clustered the houses of the tenants, freemen who paid the lord a yearly rent in money or kind, and serfs, the villani, who were bound to his service and worked upon his demesne lands.


The servile class formed the larger proportion of the inhabitants of the township : they were the villani, the villeins, the people of the vill.


https://goo.gl/ueXGnd

Some Notes on Manors & Manorial History by A. Hamilton ThompsonIn
Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society. Volume XV. 1928. pp. 294–.
https://goo.gl/V745Wq archived https://goo.gl/uwTQ9Y

Paul Vinogradoff (2010). The Growth of the Manor. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-01450-2.
The growth of the manor : Vinogradoff, Paul - Internet Archive

A History of Lordships of the Manor
http://www.msgb.co.uk/lordships.html


Fiefs

Fiefs Latin, feudum.

The Latin word feudum is translated as Holding but is more commonly known as a fief.

By convention, the term fief is used to describe all the manors held by a tenant-in-chief in one county. These would be described in a single block, or chapter, unless the tenant-in-chief was a minor landholder in which case they were described in part of a collective fief towards the end of the county. All the county fiefs held by a tenant-in-chief constituted his Honour. Honour and fief are both conventional, not technical terms, and they are sometimes used interchangeably.

The usage in Domesday Book is even looser: feudum was applied to honours, fiefs, and even to single manors, both before and after the Conquest. Many historians would regard a pre-Conquest feudum as an anachronism.

The history of English law before the time of Edward I (second edition, 1898);

Sir Frederick Pollock; Frederic William Maitland (1898) . The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I. Volume I. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 978-1-58477-718-2.

Sir Frederick Pollock; Frederic William Maitland (1899). The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I. Volume II. University Press.

Susan Reynolds (1996). Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820648-4.

Susan Reynolds (1996). Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted. Fiefs and Medieval Property Relations: Clarendon Press. pp. 48–. ISBN 978-0-19-820648-4.

It is, of course, quite possible that the military service due from and owed by a single manor or vill may be equivalent to a knight's fee (feodum unius militis); but it might be more, or sometimes less, some often amounting to only a fraction of a knight’s fee..

Ecclesiastical Organisation

J. Blair, 'Introduction: From Minster to Parish Church', in Minsters and Parish Churches, 1-19.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190410064959/http://ls-tlss.ucl.ac.uk/course-materials/ARCL2018_73443.pdf

 Domesday Book recorded two types of ecclesiatical organisation

1. Parochial or Parish System

Priest of the manor, priest of the vill, church of the vill [ecclesia villae].

These were vills and manors in which the church and its priest was generally sponsored by the lord of the manor

Parish (Church_of_England) - Wikipedia
Proprietary church - Wikipedia
Nigel Saul (2017). Lordship and Faith: The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-870619-9.

2. Minster System

The older Anglo-Saxon in which there was a central collegiate minster, usually a monastery which with its group of clergy [canons] served a number of villages around it, as a team ministry

Minster Hypothesis - Wikipedia