Book Description

Vinogradoff, Sir Paul. Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1892. xii, 464 pp. Reprint available December, 2004 by The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd. ISBN 1-58477-477-0. Cloth. $95. * This classic study was highly regarded by Maitland and Holdsworth. An unsigned article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th. ed.) said it is "perhaps the most important book written on the peasantry of the feudal age and the village community in England; it can only be compared for value with F.W. Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond." (28:100). Vinogradoff [1854-1925] argues that the Norman-era villain was the direct descendent of the Anglo-Saxon freeman, so the typical Anglo-Saxon settlement was a free community rather than a manor. An impressive work of original scholarship and synthesis, it "shed a wholly new light on the social and legal aspects of the institution of villainage.": Holdsworth, The Historians of English Law 86.