62 
A’ATURE AOTES. 
obscured the origin of English commons, and has given us in 
brief the views thereon of Nasse, Von Maurer and Sir Henry 
Maine : 
“The common rights now existing are in most cases survivals of a system 
of collective ownership of land by the inhabitants of their several districts, the 
prevalence of which in the early stages of communities has been traced over the 
greater part of Europe. Under this system there was originally no individual 
ownership of land. It was owned in common by village communities. That 
portion of it only which was suitable and necessary for production of corn and 
other crops was enclosed and cultivated ; the remainder was open to the cattle of 
all, and all the members of the community were entitled to cut turf and bracken 
there for their fuel and litter. The enclosed part was generally divided into three 
great fields for a three-course system of husbandry, of which one field was in turn 
left in fallow. Each of these fields was divided into a certain number of equal 
parts, which were distributed annually by lot among the heads of families con- 
stituting the village community.” 
Freeman also throws the weight of his testimony into the 
scale of evidence when he tells us that “ actual common lands, 
the remains of the most ancient form of property, must, as is 
shown by the large traces of them that still exist, have been far 
more usual than the entries in Domesday would lead us to 
think.”* 
So things went on till after the Norman Conquest. The 
Normans found the “ mark ” or village community ready to 
hand, and converted it into the “ manor.”! The military chief 
who was placed at its head “ had the right of summoning to 
arms the inferior landowners within his district or manor.” 
Though dependants — 
“ They held iheir land on certain tenure, and not at the mere wilt of the lord, 
and they had the right of turning out their cattle on the waste land of the manor. 
Hut an inferior class called villeins held their land and houses solely at the will of 
the lord, and a yet lower class with no holdings became the lord’s serfs, or 
bondsmen.” 
The temptation on the part of the lords of the manor to treat 
the common lands as their own property was too strong to be 
resisted, and, not content with this, they claimed the right of 
inclosing portions of it to be farmed by their villeins. 
The Parliament of Barons (for no commoners had as yet 
been summoned) set its seal on this claim in the Statute of Mer- 
ton (1235) to the effect “ that the lords of the manor should be 
allowed to inclose, or approve, as it was called, parts of the 
waste lands of their manors, provided it should appear, on com- 
plaint of the free tenants, that there was left a sufficiency of 
common to satisfy their rights, with free access thereto.” This 
Statute of Merton became the pivot upon which the inclosure 
system turned with one important break of time, which we shall 
notice, right down to present da5'S. 
About the reign of Henry IV., the admission of the villeins 
* History of the Xorsnan Com/uest, v., 463. 
t The words “ manor ” and “ mark ” are not convertible terms, the former 
meaning “dwelling-place,” and the latter “boundary.” 
