es of villainage existing except as
between him and his own lord. Therefore, if a villain was willing to
sacrifice his little holding and make the necessary break with his
usual surroundings, he might frequently escape into a veritable
freedom.

The attitude of the common law was favorable to liberty as against
servitude, and in cases of doubt the decisions of the royal courts
were almost invariably favorable to the freedom of the villain.

But all these possibilities of liberty were only for individual cases.
Villainage as an institution continued to exist and to characterize
the position of the mass of the peasantry. The number of freemen
through the country was larger, but the serfdom of the great majority
can scarcely have been much influenced by these individual cases. The
commutation of services, however, and still more the abandonment of
demesne farming by the lords of manors, were general causes conducive
to freedom. The former custom indicated that the lords valued the
money that could be paid by the villains more than they did their
compulsory services. That is, villains whose services were paid for in
money were practically renters of land from the lords, no longer
serfs on the land of the lords. The lord of the manor could still of
course enforce his claim to the various payments and restrictions
arising from the villainage of his tenants, but their position as
payers of money was much less servile than as performers of forced
labor. The willingness of the lords to accept money instead of service
showed as before stated that there were other persons who could be
hired to do the work. The villains were valued more as tenants now
that there were others to serve as laborers. The occupants of
customary holdings were a higher class and a class more worth the
lord's consideration and favor than the mere laborers. The villains
were thus raised into partial freedom by having a free class still
below them.

[Illustration: An Old Street in Worcester. (Britton: _Picturesque
Antiquities of English Cities_.)]

The effect of the relinquishment of the old demesne farms by the lords
of the manors was still more influential in destroying serfdom. The
lords had valued serfdom above all because it furnished an adequate
and absolutely certain supply of labor. The villains had to stay on
the manor and provide the labor necessary for the cultivation of the
demesne. But if the demesne was rented out to a farmer or divided
a