Definition of "villenage" []

• Alternative form of villeinage. (noun)

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• "Warwickshire, a butcher's son, with a turn for making verses, whose name was William Shakspere; the Queen had issued a decree forbidding costly apparel (not including her own); and the last trace of feudal serfdom had just disappeared, by the abolition of "villenage" upon the Crown manors."
• "The tenements held in villenage of the lord of a manor, at least where they consisted of a messuage or dwelling-house, are often called _astra_ in our older books and court-rolls."
• "The beginning of the seventeenth century is the period usually referred to as the date of the extinction of personal villenage."