vTbe riDibMe Hgee. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



THE TEANSFOEMATIOX OP THE LANDLORD INTO THE LANDOWNEE, 

 AND THE VILLEIN INTO THE TENANT FARMER. 



The principal laws of this period bearing on the land in its 

 relationship to the feudal system have been already considered, 

 but there still remains to discuss a class of legislation which 

 was necessitated by an alteration in the status of both classes 

 composing the landed interest. We have arrived at a period 

 in the history of the English land when its owner was be- 

 ginning to find out the small advantage to himself and the 

 large disadvantage to the labouring class of the villeinage 

 system. Now the reason for this discovery was, that the old 

 ideas of seignorial relationship with both land and people had 

 been gradually undergoing a change. It had been all very 

 well to own and command men in warlike times ; but now that 

 nations were beginning to regard bloodshed less as a pleasant 

 pastime and more in the light of a stern necessity, to be 

 avoided if possible, landlords began to look into their seignorial 

 rights with a \-iew to extracting from them something more 

 lucrative than that which jurisdictory powers and military 

 tenures had hitherto produced. When the feudal system was 

 first constructed, men's minds had never grasped all that land- 

 ownership would some day come to mean ; otherwise the 

 subject would have been dealt with on different lines and in 

 more definite terms. The thirteenth-century lawj^ers had 

 therefore to continually invent fictitious rights, such as the 

 lost grant, in order to keep pace with the growth in ideas on 

 proprietorship. 



On the other hand, the people were not likely to relinquish 



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