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The Origin Of Property In Land: Paul Vinogradoff And The Late Xixth Century English Historians, Caroline Phillips Stoel

Dissertations and Theses

One of the problems which has intrigued English historians for over a hundred years is that of the position of the common man in early England. Was he a freeman working land held communally by the village, or was he a serf laboring upon the land of an overlord? Since this question of freedom is inextricably interwoven with landholding concepts the problem may also be stated another way: Did private property in land exist from the earliest times, or is that institution the result of centuries of appropriation by individuals of land originally belonging to the commmunity as a whole? …