Saturday, 15 January 2022 — Origin: Climate & Capitalism

CAPITAL VERSUS COMMONS, 5

Three centuries of mass resistance to privatization and dispossession

Articles in this series:

1. Commons and classes before capitalism
2. ‘Systematic theft of communal property’
3. Against Enclosure: The Commonwealth Men
4. Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class
5. Against Enclosure: The Commoners Fight Back

 by Ian Angus

In 1542, Henry VIII gave his friend and privy councilor Sir William Herbert a gift: the buildings and lands of a dissolved monastery, Wilton Abbey near Salisbury. Herbert didn’t need farmland, so he had the buildings torn down, expelled the monastery’s tenants, and physically destroyed an entire village. In their place he built a large mansion, and fenced off the surrounding lands as a private park for hunting.

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