v.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 17 



Y. 



AGKICULTURAL COMMUNITIES. 



NOTWITHSTANDING that the facts I have men- 

 tioned are well known and rest, for the most part, on 

 unquestionable authority, there is, I think, a current 

 opinion that, during Anglo-Saxon times, land in 

 England was, generally speaking, in the hands of 

 free peasant proprietors men who cultivated the 

 soil with their own hands, for their own profit and 

 were not subject to any master. 



This opinion has received confirmation from a 

 work on the Agricultural Communities of the Middle 

 Ages in England, by E. Nasse, a German writer of 

 considerable learning. The author maintains that 

 communities of free peasant proprietors prevailed in 

 England during the Anglo-Saxon period. 



The author has, however, fallen into some im- 

 portant errors with regard to facts, and the con- 

 clusions which he draws from facts are not always 

 incontrovertible. 



His theory is founded, in a great measure, on the 



G 



