villanage Meaning, Definition & Usage

Vil"lan*age noun
Etymology
OF. villenage, vilenage. See Villain.
Definitions
  1. (Feudal Law) The state of a villain, or serf; base servitude; tenure on condition of doing the meanest services for the lord. In this sense written also villenage, and villeinage.
    I speak even now as if sin were condemned in a perpetual villanage, never to be manumitted. Milton.
    Some faint traces of villanage were detected by the curious so late as the days of the Stuarts. Macaulay.
  2. Baseness; infamy; villainy. Obs. Dryden.

Webster 1913