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been general, and in Africa universal, and so remains to this day: In Europe it hath long since declined; its first declension there, is said to have been in Spain,
executor where the lord had only a term of years in him. Lastly, the slavery extended to the issue, if the father was a villein, our law deriving the condition of the child from that of the father, contrary to the Roman law, in which the rule was, partus sequitur ventum. Hargrave’s Case of Negroe Somerset, page 26 and 27.
The same writer refers the origin of vassalage in England, principally to the wars between the British, Saxon, Danish, and Norman nations, contending for the sovereignty of that country, in opposition to the opinion of judge Fitzherbert, who supposed villeinage to have commenced at the conquest. Ib. 27, 28. And this be proves from Spelman and other antiquaries. Ib. The writ de nativo habendo, by which the lord was enabled to recover his villein that had absconded from him, creates a presumption that all the natives of England were at some period reduced to a state of villeinage, the word nativus, which signified a villein, most clearly designating the person meant thereby to be a native: this etymon is obvious, as well from the import of the word nativus, as from the history of the more remote ages of Britain. Sir Edward Coke’s Etymology, “quia plerumque nascuntur servi,” is one of those puerile conceits, which so frequently occur in his works, and are unworthy of so great a man.
Barrington in his observations upon magna carta, c. 4. observes, that the villeins who held by servile tenures were considered as so many negores on a sugar plantation; the words “liber homo,” in magna carta,
