In England, the two documents that enshrined the commons in law and morality—the Magna Carta and the Charter of the Forest, both forced on King John in 1215—possessed, in Peter Linebaugh’s words, “the aura of power, the glamour of color, and the solemnity of religion.” Because the world was a sacramental place, a violation of the commons, like the extraction of usury, put one’s soul in eternal peril.
