windfallen

Ironically, the very term windfall arose from a practice that likely involved nothing akin to an unearned gain.(314) It seems highly unlikely that the Crown and its nobles, lords of the medieval English forests, would have permitted peasants to haul away windfallen branches that could have been harvested at any noticeable profit.

Some hypothetical examples, however, help illustrate how modern states' expanding ability to gather and digest information may help separate windfallen chaff from earned wheat.

Commoners' right to take windfallen wood was far from universal in medieval England.