10 ORIGIN OF COMMONS. 



not at the mere will of the lord, and they had the 

 right of turning- out their cattle on the waste land of 

 the Manor. An inferior class of persons, cultivating 

 small plots of land, fell into a mucli lower status, and 

 by a process of commendation or subjection, lost their 

 rights of property enjoyed under the Saxon system. 

 They were considered as having no rights independently 

 of the will of the lord. They held their land and 

 houses at his caprice. These people became the villeins 

 of the Manor. A yet inferior class of persons with no 

 holdings of land became the serfs or bondsmen of the 

 lord, without any rights whatever. The feudal Chief thus 

 became lord of the district or Manor. He came to be 

 regarded as owner of the Manor, subject to the admitted 

 rights of the larger landowners or free tenants; and 

 the Common or "Folk-land" was held by the lawyers 

 to be vested in him subject to the rights of pasture 

 of the free tenants. 



The process by which this change from the Saxon 

 system to the feudal system was effected has been well 

 described by Monsieur de Laveleye. " The fief having 

 been granted by the Sovereign to the lord, the latter 

 assumed as a consequence that the whole land belonged 

 to him. He did not, on this account, suppose himself 

 able to despoil the peasants of the enjoyment of their 

 land or of their right of using the common Forest 

 or pasturage, but these rights were regarded as privi- 

 leges exercised over the property of the lord." 



Already before the Norman conquest this change 

 had begun in England, and was largely in force in 



