this tended to fixity of tenure. The Norman kings, and the barons under them, wanted a man to perform the duties of the fief, and were not extreme as to whose son that man should be—a son-in-law, or an adopted son who married the old tenant's daughter, would serve the turn of providing a fighting man. Primogeniture seems to have been rather a custom than a law—nor does any law in the Statute Book establish it.
There were only two ways by which a serf could become free: he could enter into religion, or he could get into a walled town. Magna Charta does not trouble itself about serfs. The barons did indeed win a great battle for liberty, but their motive was to preserve themselves and their own rights from the aggressions of such a king as John.
The change was great. The whole theory of the State was altered. The old Saxon idea of the community slowly dwindled and died, as feudal lordship developed. And though the Saxon leaven long remained as a modifying influence, it cannot be said to have triumphed. To other causes than the land we owe the political freedom we have attained, and it cannot be said that even yet the land is free. The incubus of feudal domination broods upon it to this day. The towns have won their freedom; in the country, the Norman laws still hold good in practice.
There is yet another legacy, which affects every rural district in the kingdom. "Another violent alteration of the English constitution," says Blackstone, "consisted in the depopulation of whole countries, for the purposes of the king's royal diversion … the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the death of a man. In the Saxon times, though no man was allowed to kill or chace the king's deer, yet he might start any game, pursue, and kill it upon his own estate. But the rigour of these new constitutions vested the sole property of all the game in England in the king alone. … From a similar principle … though the forest laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung a bastard slip, known by the name of the game laws … but with this' difference; that the forest laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land, the game laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor."[1]
- ↑ "Commentaries on the Laws of England," Bk. IV. pp. 408-409.
