Villainage in England
VINOGRADOFF
Villainage in England
ESSAYS IN
ENGLISH MEDIAEVAL HISTORY
BY
SIR PAUL VINOGRADOFF
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. 1
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON CAPE TOWN SALISBURY IBADAN NAIROBI LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG TOKYO
FIRST PUBLISHED 1892
REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
BY VIVIAN RIDLER
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
1968
PREFACE
A foreigner's attempt to treat of difficult and muchdisputed points of English history requires some justification.Why should a Russian scholar turn to the arduousstudy of English mediaeval documents? Can he say anythingof sufficient general interest to warrant his explorationof so distant a field?
The first question is easier to answer than the second.
There are many reasons why we in Russia are especiallykeen to study what may be called social history—theeconomic development of nations, their class divisions andforms of co-operation. We are still living in surroundingscreated by the social revolution of the peasant emancipation;many of our elder contemporaries remember boththe period of serfdom and the passage from it to modernlife; some have taken part in the working out and puttinginto practice of the emancipating acts. Questions entirelysurrendered to antiquarian research in the West of Europeare still topics of contemporary interest with us.
It is not only the civil progress of the peasantry that wehave to notice, but the transformation and partial decay ofthe landed gentry, the indirect influence of the economicconvulsions on politics, ideas, and morality, and, in a morespecial way, the influence of free competition on soil andpeople that had been fettered for ages, the passage from'natural husbandry' to the money system, the substitutionof rents for labour, above all, the working of communalinstitutions under the sway of the lord and in their modernfree shape. Government and society have to deal evennow with problems that must be solved in the light ofvihistory, if in any light at all, and not by instinct gropingin the dark. All such practical problems verge towardsone main question: how far legislation can and should actupon the social development of the agrarian world. Areeconomic agencies to settle for themselves who has to tillland and who shall own it? Or can we learn from Westernhistory what is to be particularly avoided and what is tobe aimed at? I do not think that anybody is likely tomaintain at the present day, that, for instance, a study ofthe formation and dissolution of the village community inthe West would be meaningless for politicians and thinkerswho have to concern themselves with the actual life of thevillage community in the East.
Another powerful incitement comes from the scientificdirection lately assumed by historical studies. They havebeen for a long time very closely connected with fineliterature: their aim was a lifelike reproduction of thepast; they required artistic power, and stirred up feelingsas well as reflective thought. Such literary history has anatural bent towards national tradition, for the same reasonthat literatu