The Collaborative International Dictionary
Villanage \Vil"lan*age\ (?; 48), n. [OF. villenage, vilenage. See Villain.]
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(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. Baseness; infamy; villainy. [Obs.]
--Dryden.
Wiktionary
n. (alternative form of villeinage English)
Usage examples of "villenage".
She has abolished slavery, villenage, serfage, political aristocracy, asserted the equality of all men before the law, vindicated the sovereignty of the people, and established universal suffrage, complete social and territorial democracy.
And even the peasants themselves, though later than other orders of the state, made their escape from those bonds of villenage or slavery in which they had formerly been retained.
After this manner villenage went gradually into disuse throughout the more civilized parts of Europe: the interest of the master, as well as that of the slave, concurred in this alteration.
And thus it will be found in the history of nations, that, whenever population has reached that density in the temperate zones, serfdom, villenage, or slavery, whatever it has been called, has disappeared.