Two new cases about freedom, with one old chestnut:

“And the reason why the king’s court can, but the sheriff and the county court cannot, pass judgment on anyone’s freedom, as they can on his villeinage, though the proof of freedom is, as it were, incidental to the plea of villeinage, is the favour with which freedom is regarded, for freedom is something beyond price and ought not to be left to the decision of ignorant and injudicious men.” (Fleta, lib. 2 cap. 51. Fleta 72 Selden Society 174)

“Freedom is the natural faculty of doing what each person pleases to do according to his will, except what is prohibited to him of right or by force. Servitude, on the other hand may be said to be the contrary, as if any person contrary to freedom should be bound upon a covenant to do something, or not to do it.” (Henrici de Bracton de Lebigus et Consuetudinibus Angliae, Sir Travers Twiss, Q.C., D.C.L., trans. London: 1878, p. 369.)

“Bereford JCP: Law is more predisposed to save and maintain one in his free estate than to condemn him or put him into servitude (version IV); since you (plaintiff) say that he (defendant) is your villein and he says that he is free the law works in his favour, etc. for it is quite clear that he remains free until you can prove the contrary by his blood” (0 Hen. 3 Norfolk 1 (fol. 122 SS 24-33))

By this, we see that freedom is proved by blood, that is, by inheritance, because the blood is inherited. As an Anglican who shall remain nameless once informed me, she “had no slave blood.” Villein, serf, slave, servi in Latin, these are all one: they mean subject to covenants, instead of living under the natural law, which is the law that makes us free.