ENGLISH COMMONS AND FORESTS. 63 
to fixity of tenure in respect of the lands they occupied is first 
recorded. This was the origin of copyhold, and as they, too, had 
recognised rights over the waste of the manor, the power of 
inclosing became greatly limited. These copyholders were the 
origin of the yeoman class, and the serfs, who became freemen 
about the same period at which the villeins were raised in the 
social scale, were the forerunners of our agricultural labourer. 
The appropriation of monasteries, together with the vast 
lands pertaining thereto, by Henry VIII., gave an impetus to 
the system of inclosure, but by the reign of Queen Anne the 
powers of the Statute of Merton had become narrowed down, as 
the Courts of Law gave protection against arbitrary inclosure. 
Henceforth, up to quite recent date, inclosure took place by 
separate Acts of Parliament. By 1846, four thousand such Acts 
had been passed, resulting in the diminution of the area of com- 
mon land by upwards of 7,175,000 acres. The current of popular 
opinion ran strongly in favour of such inclosures, as it was thought 
absolutely necessary to bring as much of the land under cultiva- 
tion as possible. But the good results of such a course were 
more than counterbalanced by one evil effect — the practical ex- 
tinction of the class of small yeomen. 
In place of special Acts, a General Inclosure Act was passed 
in 1845, and by 1869 the acreage of inclosures under its operation 
was 614,800, of which only 4,000 acres had been set aside for 
public purposes. But a few years earlier, about 1864, a gradual 
change in public opinion had already begun to set in. Thought- 
ful people saw that the commons near towns were only inclosed 
for building purposes and never for cultivation, while as open 
spaces for recreation they were becoming invaluable. They also 
saw that in rural districts it mattered little whether a few more 
acres of barren soil that would only bear a stunted crop were 
added to the cultivated area, when for well-nigh twenty years 
Free Trade had made us independent of the home supply of 
corn. At the same time the rights attaching to commons in 
populous districts were getting to be disused, and the manor 
courts, once regularly attended, were rarely, if ever, held. The 
lords of the manor, near London and elsewhere, now saw their 
opportunity. Perceiving that it was becoming unpopular to use 
the Parliament of the day as an engine for inclosure, they be- 
thought themselves of the ancient Statute of Merton, and of 
the use it could be put to now that the rights of common were 
falling into desuetude. 
The Report of the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Com- 
mons in 1865 was fully against the inclosure system. While 
recognising that the commoners’ rights were rarely exercised, it 
maintained that all future inclosures would only be made for 
building purposes ; and as the value of all such commons as 
recreation grounds was enormous, recommended that the Statute 
of Merton should be repealed. But the Parliament of the day 
willed otherwise, and for nearly thirty years longer the Statute 
