In the early medieval period, some farmers actually chose to abandon free status in favor of
villeinage "for greater security of tenure, or as a bar to pleas of debt, or to support claims of inheritance." POSTAN, supra note 55, at 284.
Article 4, which asserted that `slavery shall be abolished', was revolutionary in a country where peasants had no rights and where
villeinage still existed.
He examines demesnes, labor services,
villeinage, crops, leases, home consumption, rents, natural resources, animal products, and many other matters in detail.
Hyams, Kings, Lords and Peasants in Medieval England: The Common Law of
Villeinage in the Twelfth and the Thirteenth Centuries (Oxford, 1980), ch.