It has been often asserted that villeins in gross seem not to have been a numerous class, and it might not be easy to adduce distinct instances of them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though we should scarcely infer, from the pains Littleton takes to describe them, that none were left in his time. But some may be found in an earlier age. In the ninth of John, William sued Ralph the priest for granting away lands which he held to Canford priory. Ralph pleaded that they were his freehold. William replied that he held them in villenage, and that he (the plaintiff) had sold one of Ralph's sisters for four shillings. (Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 860, 4to. edition.) And Mr. Wright has found in Madox's Formulare Anglicanum not less than five instances of villeins sold with their family and chattels, but without land. (Archæologia, xxx. 228.) Even where they were sold along with land, unless it were a manor, they would, as has been observed before, have been villeins in gross. I have, however, been informed that in valuations under escheats in the old records a separate value is never put upon villeins; their alienation without the land was apparently not contemplated. Few cases concerning villeins in gross, it has been said, occur in the Year-books; but villenage of any kind does not furnish a great many; and in several I do not perceive, in consulting the report, that the party can be shown to have been regardant. One reason why villeins in gross should have become less and less numerous was that they could, for the most part, only be claimed by showing a written grant, or by prescription through descent; so that, if the title-deed were lost, or the descent unproved, the villein became free. Manumissions were often, no doubt, gratuitous; in some cases the villein seems to have purchased his freedom. For though in strictness, as Glanvil tells us, he could not "libertatem suam suis denariis quærere," inasmuch as all he possessed already belonged to the lord, it would have been thought a meanness to insist on so extreme a right. In order, however, to make the deed more secure, it was usual to insert the name of a third person as paying the consideration-money for the enfranchisement. (Archæologia, xxx. 228.) It appears not by any means improbable that regular money payments, or other fixed liabilities, were often substituted instead of uncertain services for the benefit of the lord as well as the tenant. And when these had lasted a considerable time in any manor, the villenage of the latter, without any manumission, would have expired by desuetude. But, perhaps, an entry of his tenure on the court-roll, with a copy given to himself, would operate of itself, in construction of law, as a manumission. This I do not pretend to determine. NOTE XV. Page 179.