Note 168 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

“When Domesday Survey was compiled” says Cunningham, “every yard of English soil was as really, if not as definitely, subject to proprietary rights as it is now”168. We do not, however, think that much importance has to be attached to this statement; for there was still much uncultivated land and, though the king claimed a right of property over this land, it was not yet held as property in the strict sense of the word, which means that all except the owner are excluded from its use. This appears from what took place in 1305, under Edward I. “By an adjustment of boundaries considerable portions of the Crown forest were given over to certain barons, who gained personally; but the position of the tenants was so much altered for the worse that their case obtained special attention in the Ordinance of the Forest, by which their rights of pasture and common were secured”169. We see that these Crown forests had been open to the use of the peasants, so that practically there was still free land. And in this time of extensive tillage the common pasture played a great part in the rural economy170.