Remember, the English word 'villain' originally meant 'peasant'/'serf'. It sounds like a safe assumption to me that the peasants were treated as subhuman creatures by most people above them in station.

James A. Donald disagrees.

A yeoman was the lowest rank of landowner, one who worked his own land or his families land, in modern terminology a peasant farmer. A villain was a sharecropper, a farmer with no land of his own, semi free, more free than a serf, though not directly equivalent to the modern free laborer. Naturally yeomen had a strong vested interest in the rule of law, for they had much to lose and little to gain from the breakdown in the rule of law. Villains had little to gain, but less to lose. People acted in accordance with their interests, and so the word yeoman came to mean a man who uses force in a brave and honorable manner, in accordance with his duty and the law, and villain came to mean a man who uses force lawlessly, to rob and destroy.

It makes quite a bit of sense. Since incentives matter I would tend to agree.

Since I know about the past interactions you two have had here, I would appreciate you just focused on the argument cited not snipe at James' other writings or character.