CHAPTER VIII 



THE ENGLISH LAND SYSTEM {continued) 



The policy adopted by the landed aristocracy in 

 those early times, and carried out through succeeding 

 ages in a continuous and unswerving manner, was a 

 very plain one. Shortly stated, it was to turn com- 

 monalty into severalty ; to ignore the rights of the 

 community ; to destroy all joint and common owner- 

 ship in the soil, and to turn the landlord into a land- 

 owner. The general result of that policy was to 

 reduce the yeoman and copyholder to ordinary rent- 

 paying tenants, the peasant to a mere wage-receiver; 

 to aggregate land into large, often immense estates, 

 the private property of a comparatively few persons ; 

 and finally, to settle our land system on the basis of 

 landlord, tenant, and labourer. 



One potent method of pursuing this policy was by 

 legal proceedings. The feudal land laws were so 

 intricate and subtle that long and expensive lawsuits, 

 carried on by wealthy landlords, by the aid of cunning 

 and unscrupulous lawyers, too often ended in the ruin 

 of the cultivating holder and the loss of his land. 



Hence it was that, in all the peasant revolts, such 

 fierce hatred was shown towards the lawyers, many of 

 the insurgents no doubt having lost their lands by 

 process of law and most of the others being liable to 

 a similar proceeding.^ 



^ This point will be further dealt with in the chapters on " Peasant 

 Revolts." 



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