140 AUGUST 



of large tracts of land which had been reclaimed 

 and given over to the plough. The workers 

 were driven from their fields, elbowed out of 

 their lands, and compelled sometimes to find 

 means of subsistence in unlawful ways. But apart 

 from this local evil attendant on the change, the 

 land question was but little altered. The King 

 claimed seignorial sway over all the lands of 

 England, but in his redistribution there was little 

 outward change in the actual position of the lower 

 classes as regards their common rights. This came 

 gradually and imperceptibly. By degrees the waste, 

 which was originally the people's waste, began to 

 be designated as the lord's waste. The manorial 

 system, which was defined and fixed under Norman 

 lawyers, recognised with the King's suzerainty 

 the landlord's all-embracing ownership. Since he 

 owned the persons of his dependents, he regarded 

 himself as owner also of their property. The 

 legal theory assumed the landlord as deriving his 

 property in the first instance by a grant from 

 the Crown, he in his turn giving out of his con- 

 sideration certain privileges to his tenants and 

 serfs. The earlier communal ownership of land 

 was ignored by those who were strong enough 

 to take all that they coveted ; and so by degrees 

 the people's waste became the lord's waste, and 

 the heritage of the poor was grabbed by the 

 rich and powerful. And thus there grew up a 

 belief that the common lands were rightly diverted 

 from their proper use when the lord assumed his 

 ownership of them and determined to enclose and 

 cultivate them ; and those commoners who pro- 



