The right of the king to unappropriated land was now enforced more strictly than before, and the lords began to claim a right of property over the commons surrounding the villages, which, however, were often still left to the use of the peasants[228].
However, there was no over-population as yet. The proprietors did their best to attract people to the vast newly colonized districts, especially to the eastern parts of Germany[229].
During the whole of this period the landlords went on subjugating the rural population, so that at the end of it the peasant proprietors, who had once formed the bulk of the population, had almost entirely disappeared, and most of the land was taken up with the estates of the great proprietors[230].
But the increase in the value of land already made itself [[377]]felt in the way in which the lords managed their estates. They less and less frequently worked their own lands; their chief aim was no longer the disposal of the labour of their dependents, but the receiving of rent. The labour dues were often commuted for money payments[231].
Labour was not worth so much to the lords as it had been. They sometimes emancipated their slaves, retaining the land which they had given them in use[232].
At the same time a class of free tenants arose. Lamprecht remarks that while the value of land had considerably increased the tributes which the villeins had to pay had remained unchanged for several centuries. In an economic sense the landlords had been dispossessed of a large proportion of their property in the land. Therefore it was not their interest to let serfdom continue.
“At this time, especially since the middle of the 12th century, the villeins and landlords of the most progressive districts settled their mutual relations by free contract. Serfdom was abolished, sometimes entirely, sometimes for the greater part, some formalities only subsisting. The former villein acquired the right to emigrate, and remained as a free tenant on the land he had till then occupied. Thus, by leasing his lands for terms of years, and sometimes for life or on hereditary tenancy, the landlord got back the full rent of his property; and this system, especially the lease for years, enabled him to raise the rent at the end of each term, according as the value of the land had increased in the meantime”[233].
Inama-Sternegg does not quite agree with this view of Lamprecht’s. Even where the rent was higher than the former customary payment, he says, the leaseholder was free from the labour dues and additional payments to which the villein had been bound, so the transition from fixed payment to rent did not always mean an enhancement of the obligation of the peasant[234]. Yet this writer too states that the leasing of land became more and more frequent. There were free contracts between proprietor and tenant, which did not interfere with the [[378]]personal liberty of the latter; even non-fulfilment of his obligations by the tenant had only pecuniary consequences[235].
We cannot but think that the reason given by Lamprecht for the transition from servile to free tenure is true. For even when the original rent was not higher than the former customary payment plus the value of the labour dues, the possibility of raising the rent after each term remained.
We hear of free tenants in this period, but not yet of free labourers. This is exactly what our theory teaches us to expect. Land, in some parts of Germany, had already acquired a high value; such land must have been very remunerative, and so people were ready to pay a rent for its use, even though there was still land to be had gratis or at a nominal rent, but far from the market and therefore less profitable. But the country was not yet so densely peopled that there were men who could not secure the use of any piece of land; therefore a class of people dependent on wages did not yet exist.