In the eleventh century this happy condition of affairs was disturbed
by the appearance of certain Spanish crusading knights, who, issuing
from the mountainous parts of the country adjacent to their own, began
to war against the Moorish authorities. In the course of a century,
and with little voluntary aid from the peasants, who distrusted
them and their religious pretensions and promises of advantage, they
managed to acquire possession of the country. Now, what do you suppose
was one of the first acts committed by these adventurers? Nothing less
than the re-enactment of the odious Roman tenure of emphyteusis, and
that in its most ancient and worst form--liability to increased
rent and to eviction; not only this, but with certain base services
combined. The wretched inhabitants were required to work so many days
in the week for these lords, to break up a certain amount of waste
land; to furnish so many cattle; to kill so many birds; to provide (in
rural districts remote from the sea) so many salt fish; to furnish so
much incense or so many porringers, iron tools, pairs of shoes, etc.

Talk of the Western Empire having "declined and fallen," as Messrs.
Gibbon and Wegg put it! Why, here it was again, and with the worst
of its ancient crimes inscribed upon its code of law. Emphyteusis was
reintroduced into Portugal by King Diniz (Dennis) in the year 1279,
and was followed by its usual effects--ruin and depopulation. In
1394 was born Prince Henry. He was the son of John I. and Philippa,
daughter of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, and was therefore the
nephew of Henry IV. of England. Perceiving and commiserating the
wretchedness of the people, and casting about him for a remedy,
Henry saw but one: that was departure from the land, emigration,
colonization, escape from the tyranny of the soil, of nobles and of
ecclesiastics--a tyranny which both his illustrious rank and his piety
forbade him to oppose. Hence his intense devotion to the discovery and