Note 204 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

Ashley, discussing the question as to whether the lords had a right to turn out the villeins, arrives at the conclusion that “during historical times and until comparatively modern days, the cultivators of the soil were always in a condition of dependence, and held their lands at the arbitrary will of their lords. For centuries the lord knew no other way of getting his land cultivated, and had no wish to get rid of a tenant; whenever he did so, it was altogether exceptional. But with the tendency to limitation and definition so characteristic of the feudal period, custom tended to harden into law, and it would seem to have been on the point of becoming law when a change in the economic situation,—the increasing advantage of pasture over tillage,—prompted the lords to fall back on their old rights. Then followed a struggle between a legal theory becoming obsolete, but backed by the influence of the landowners, and a custom on its way to become law, backed by public sentiment and by the policy of the government”204.