52 LAND REFORM 



But of all the means by which the cultivators of the 

 soil were deprived of their rights, the inclosures of 

 land were undoubtedly the most effective and calamit- 

 ous. The evils connected with the practice were the 

 result, not so much of the actual inclosures of land, 

 as of the principle of general confiscation on which 

 they were carried out. 



The beginning of the policy of inclosures — as far as 

 legal action is concerned — may perhaps be placed at 

 the passing of the "Statute of Merton " in 1235, ex- 

 tended soon afterwards by the " Statute of West- 

 minster." ^ Before that date, a lord could not inclose 

 without the consent of his free tenants,^ The Court 

 held at Merton, composed of the "archbishops, 

 bishops, and the greater part of the earls and barons 

 of England," decreed that "as certain great men" 

 complained that they could not make profit, etc., from 

 their waste lands, territorial lords thenceforth should 

 appropriate their vast manors, provided they left to 

 the freeholders existing at the time "sufficient pasture 

 to their tenements with ingress and egress to and from 

 the same." The freeholders themselves had no voice 

 in this settlement. Thus the barons assembled, by a 

 law made by themselves, gave to themselves full rights 

 over all the manor, wastes, woods, forests, and pastures 

 of England, with the exception of the "sufficient pas- 

 ture " which was to be left for the then existing free- 

 holders. In the face of an ever-increasing population, 



1 " Henry III held Parliament at Merton the day after his coronation, 

 in which were enacted Provisions of Merton, which are the most ancient 

 body of laws after Magna Charta, and consist of eleven Articles" (Cam- 

 den's " Hritannica," published 1607). The Statute of Westminster was 

 13 Edward I, chap. 46. 



2 See "Villeinage in England," by Paul Vinagiadoff. (Clarendon 

 Press.) 



