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 much 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 
