It is not strange that in view of such disabilities Bracton thought himself entitled to assume equality of condition between the English villain and the Roman slave, and to use the terms _servus_, _villanus_, and _nativus_ indiscriminately. The characteristics of slavery are copied by him from Azo's commentary on the Institutes, as material for a description of the English bondmen, and he distinguishes them carefully even from the Roman _adscripticii_ or _coloni_ of base condition. The villains are protected in some measure against their lord in criminal law; they cannot be slain or maimed at pleasure; but such protection is also afforded to slaves in the later law of the Empire, and in fact it is based in Bracton on the text of the Institutes given by Azo, which in its turn is simply a summary of enactments made by Hadrian and Antonine. The minor law books of the thirteenth century follow Bracton in this identification of villainage with slavery. Although this identification could not but exercise a decisive influence on the theory of the subject, it must be borne in mind that it did not originate in a wanton attempt to bring together in the books dissimilar facts from dissimilar ages. On the contrary, it came into the books because practice had paved the way for it. Bracton was enabled to state it because he did not see much difference between the definitions of Azo and the principles of Common Law, as they had been established by his masters Martin of Pateshull and William Raleigh. He was wrong, as will be shown by-and-by, but certainly he had facts to lean upon, and his theory cannot be dismissed on the ground of his having simply copied it from a foreigner's treatise. [Villains in gross and villains regardant.] Most modern writers on the subject have laid stress upon a difference between _villains regardant_ and _villains in gross_, said to be found in the law books[41]. It has been taken to denote two degrees of servitude--the predial dependence of a _colonus_ and the personal dependence of a true slave. The villain _regardant_ was (it is said) a villain who laboured under disabilities in relation to his lord only, the villain in gross possessed none of the qualities of a freeman. One sub-division would illustrate the debasement of freemen who had lost their own land, while the other would present the survival of ancient slavery.