From the 5th to the 12th centuries — the Middle Ages — the freehold properties that were commonplace at the time were referred to by the Latin word, feudum. to create a history of enlightened European nation states, however, historians in the 17th century buried that past under a new term, feudalism, a quasi-barbarism from which these states could then be seen to have heroically evolved.
Local lords in the Middle Ages expanded the territories subject to them and intensified their control over the peoples living there; in the 17th century, in England and Wales Inclosure Acts began to be passed, creating property rights over land that had been held in common.
Between 1604 and 1914, around 28,000 km2 of open fields and common land were inclosed by over 5,200 such Acts. Tenants and their descendants were evicted, from their homes and the land on which they depended, with no alternative but to labour in the factories of the consequently burgeoning cities and to live in their tenements and slums. A poem from the 18th century, The Goose and the Common, by an unknown writer, protests this injustice:
They hang the man and flog the woman Who steals the goose from off the common Yet let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose. The law demands that we atone When we take things we do not own But leaves the lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine. The poor and wretched don't escape If they conspire the law to break This must be so but they endure Those who conspire to make the law. The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common And geese will still a common lack Till they go and steal it back.
The total land area of England and Wales is approximately 151,000 km2. The Inclosed land represented nearly 20% of this.