Fifteenth-century British peasants had free entry to common land for subsistence.

Evidence

In fifteenth-century Britain, the majority of the population consisted of free peasant farmers, who were subjects of feudal lords but had access to their means of subsistence. The farmers had the right to cultivate a plot of land and had free entry to the common land: meadows for grazing, forests for gathering wood, and so on. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 66

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs with the commons/enclosure literature and with the contrast to later market dependence described at location 62. — connects to: The English Enclosure Acts forced peasants off commons land into factory labor. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1365