properly signifies the same with slavery, but in old law books is used for villainage (see Villenage). Tenants in bondage paid knots, and did fealty; they were not to fell trees in their own garden, without license of the lord. The widow of a tenant in bondage held her husband's estate quam diu vivere sine marito, "as long as she lived single."

Bondage by the Forlock, or Bondagium per anteriores crimes capitis, was when a freeman renounced his liberty, and became slave to some great man; which was done by the ceremony of cutting off a lock of hair from the forehead, and delivering it to his lord; denoting that he was to be maintained by him for the future. Such a bondman, if he reclaimed his liberty, or were fugitive from his master, might be drawn again to his servitude by the nose; whence the origin of the popular menace to pull a man by the nose.