One result of the change of land tenure should be noticed. Previously to the great plague of 1349 the land was divided up into small tenancies. An instance taken by Professor Rogers of a parish, where every man held a greater or a less amount of land, is a typical example of thousands of manors all over the country. It shows, he says, "how generally the land was distributed," and that the small farms and portions of land, so remarkable in France at the present day, did prevail in England five hundred years ago. A great portion of this land, however, although held by distinct tenants, lay in common, and it is a very general complaint at this period that, as the fields were undivided, they could not be used except by the multitude of tenants, which had been carried off by the great sickness. To render them profitable, under the condition of things consequent upon the new system of farming, these tracts of country had to be divided up by the plantation of hedges, which form now so distinguishing a mark of the English landscape as compared with that of a foreign country. The population also having by the operation of the great mortality become already detached from the soil, before the final extinction of serfdom, their liberation resulted not, as in other countries, in the establishment of a large class of peasant proprietors, but in that of a small body of large landowners. Of course, again, such a phrase must not be interpreted [p202] in the modern sense, whereby a "landowner" is an "owner" of land in a way which, in those days of custom and perpetuity of tenure, would not have been even understood. The change then effected rendered possible the character of the land settlement that now prevails.