person to leave the land there can be no doubt. [Tenant right of free man holding in villainage.] The second conclusion is, that if a free man hold in villainage by villain services he cannot be ejected by the lord against his will, provided he is performing the services due from the holding. What Bracton says here is distinctly implied by the decisions of 1219 and 1220, which subject the lord's power of dealing with the land to a condition--non-performance of services[113]. There can be no question as to the importance of such a view; it contains, as it were, the germ of copyhold tenure[114]. It places villainage substantially on the same footing as freehold, which may also be forfeited by discontinuance of the services, although the procedure for establishing a forfeiture in that case would be a far more elaborate one. And it must be understood that Bracton's deduction by no means rests on the single case before us. He appeals also to a decision of William Raleigh, who granted an assize of mort d'ancestor to a free man holding in villainage[115]. Unfortunately the original record of this case has been lost. The decision in a case of 1225 goes even further. It is an assize of novel disseisin brought by a certain William the son of Henry against his lord Bartholomew the son of Eustace. The defendant excepts against the plaintiff as his villain; the court finds, on the strength of a verdict, that he is a villain, and still they decide that William may hold the land in dispute, if he consents to perform the services; if not, he forfeits his land[116]. Undoubtedly the decision before us is quite isolated, and it goes against the rules of procedure in such cases. Once the exception proved, nothing ought to have been said as to the conditions of the tenure. Still the mistake is characteristic of a state of things which had not quite been brought under the well-known hard and fast rule. And the best way to explain it is to suppose that the judges had in their mind the more familiar case of free men holding in villainage, and gave decision in accordance with Martin of Bestenover _v._ Montacute, and the case decided by Raleigh[117]. All these instances go clean against the usually accepted doctrine, that holding in villainage is the same as holding at the will of the lord: the celebrated addition 'according to the custom of the manor' would quite fit them. They bring home forcibly one main consideration, that although in the thirteenth century the feudal doctrine of non-interference of the state between lord and servile tenantry was possessed of the field, its victory was by no means complete. Everywhere we come across remnants of a state of things in which one portion at least of the servile class had civil rights as well as duties in regard to the lord. [The test of services.]