reasons also explain why meadow-land changed hands annually. The permanent ownership of arable was necessary in the interests of good husbandry. A farmer would not concentrate much effort on his strips, if the next year they were to pass into other possession. But the hay - fields were not tilled or manured, and a temporary partition was therefore not open to this objection. Indeed, there was a distinct advantage in the system of annual redistribution as applied to meadow-land. We have seen that after the hay was mown the fields lay open to common use, and the village cattle pastured upon the stubble. The period of enclosure, termed 'the defence', lasted usually from spring (Candlemas, 2nd February) to Lammas Day (1st August), and accordingly the meadows were commonly called “Lammas Meadows"1. Now the strips of meadow were so small that it would not be easy to retain them in individual ownership during the many months of the year when the hay-fields were treated as common pasture, and the practice of re-allotment at the beginning of each season would recommend itself as the simplest and most natural expedient. common. In addition to rights over the meadow, the rights of Rights of common constituted a valuable appurtenance which was invariably attached to every holding as an inseparable and indispensable adjunct. On every side of the arable fields lay large stretches of land, which were left uncultivated and served as common waste, and over it the villagers had certain rights. Chief of these common rights was that of pasture, and its importance can scarcely be exaggerated. The system of tillage could not have been carried on without cattle to plough and manure and to carry loads, and accordingly there was vital need for pasture. Private enclosed pasture was unusual, and so a portion of the common waste was devoted to purposes of pasturage. 3 This pasture-land is to be distinguished from meadow, since it 1 Commons were waste or pasture-land open all the year; Lammas Land was meadow; Michaelmas Land was arable, open between harvest and seed-time. Commons (i.e. uncultivated land) must be distinguished from Common Fields (i.e. cultivated land). 2 Vinogradoff, Villainage, 260. All commons were not necessarily actual waste land, i.e. heaths or marshes: W. Hasbach, History of the Agricultural Labourer (1908), 92. Encroachment upon the waste. 1 was used all the year round for feeding oxen and horses and sheep. It was not partitioned into strips, and there was no ownership in severalty either permanent or temporary. But the principle of equality was at work here, as in other directions. Just as every villager suffered restrictions where his land was used for grain or hay, so he was restrained from pasturing upon the commons an unlimited number of cattle. The use of the commons was in technical phrase 'stinted', and rights of common were carefully apportioned to the holdings in the open fields. Legal distinctions were drawn between three different kinds of pasture rights: appendant, appurtenant and in gross. Common appendant 1 was a prescriptive right attached to the ownership of arable, and was the most important and the most general. The number of cattle allowed to each holding was fixed, as well as their kind; only 'commonable' beasts employed in actual cultivation, oxen and horses for the plough, and sheep and cows for manuring, were permitted to pasture, and those who overstepped the limits laid down in the communal rules were punished in the manorial court. Common appurtenant 2 was the right to pasture either a greater quantity of cattle or cattle of a kind that was not used in tillage, swine and goats and geese; this right proceeded from the lord's grant or from an agreement. Lastly, common in gross occurred when the right of pasture was extended to those who were not strip-holders, and had no part or share in the cultivation of the arable. The regulations, by which the management of the commons was carried on, affected every individual alike, and even the lord of the manor was not exempted from their operation. In legal theory he was no less the owner of the waste than of the arable and meadow, but he usually submitted to communal control and recognized the binding force of immemorial custom. If in contempt of local usage he pastured on the waste a greater quantity of cattle than was his due, his action did not pass unchallenged, and cases of litigation were not unknown. The great mass 1 J. Williams, Rights of Common (1880), 31. 2 Ibid. 168. Vinogradoff, Villainage, 272. of the tenantry were denied a legal status in their relations to the lord, but the freeholders at all events were able to voice the general grievance and claim a hearing in the king's court. A more serious infringement of the villagers' right of common was the curtailment of the waste owing to seigniorial encroachment. The lord was naturally tempted to enclose portions of the waste for purposes of tillage, but this conflicted with the interests of the peasants. The approvement of the waste, the right to enclose the commons, developed during the thirteenth century into a burning question. The Extent' of Denbigh1 throws light upon the various stages in the lord's encroachment upon the waste. To begin with, we find woods and pastures " absolutely free", where no dues whatever were paid. Then came other woods and pastures to which small dues were attached; others again burdened with heavy dues, and finally those enclosed by the lord for his own purposes. The Statute of Merton 2 (1235) recognized the lord's right to occupy waste land provided he left sufficient pasture for his free tenants. This act suffered from two serious defects. It was too vague, opening the door to endless controversy as to what should be deemed sufficient for the tenants, a point on which the interested parties were scarcely likely to come to agreement. Again the restrictions imposed upon the lord, however unsatisfactory, only concerned the free tenants and did not protect the general body of the villagers. As to the earlier practice before 1235, it is difficult to speak with certainty. It is sometimes thought that the Statute of Merton was a modification of existing common law in the interests of the freeholders, and that hitherto the lord had exercised an arbitrary right of approvement unchecked. But it appears more likely that in earlier times the lord was not allowed to enclose any of the common waste without the assent of the free tenants. 3 Besides his right of pasture over the waste, the villager common could stock his cattle on the fields of corn-land and hay of shack. 1 " Survey of the Honour of Denbigh ", in Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales, i. p. xli. 2 Statutes, i. 2. 3 Cf. Vinogradoff, Villainage, 274. during the period of the year when the fences were removed and the land lay open. Between harvest and seed-time arable and meadow alike were united with the waste, and the proprietary rights of the individual owners were limited by the communal right of all the villagers to use the land as common pasture, a right technically known as common of shack1. We have already seen how the treatment of the open fields as in a certain sense communal property was a characteristic feature of mediaeval husbandry, and in striking contrast to modern conceptions of ownership. The employment of the arable for purposes of pasture was in fact advantageous in many ways. The care of supervision was diminished when cattle were kept within the immediate vicinity of the village, and there was also less danger of sudden raids on the part of hostile neighbours or men from across the border or from over the sea. Again, where land was tilled and oxen employed day by day, the remoter pastures could be of little service. It is clear also that the manure of the cattle was no less indispensable to the soil than the stubble of corn and hay left lying in the fields was necessary for the cattle 2. This consideration entered largely into the relations between the lord of the manor and the villagers on his estate. The Anglo-Saxon freeman was not only "mote-worthy, and fyrd-worthy ", but also “faldworthy"; he was a suitor in the national courts, a fighter in the national host and a sharer in the national economy. He could send his cattle either to his own fold or to that of the village. The denial of this right was attended by social consequences; it became a mark of degradation and of inferior status. The tenure of 'fold-soke' by which a tenant was bound to do suit at his lord's fold appears frequently in the Domesday of East Anglia, though, on the other hand, fold service on the part of freemen is not unknown in later centuries. Thus the abbot of Kingeswood was bound to find a fold of over two hundred sheep 1 Williams, Rights of Common, 68. 2 Cf. Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, 180-181. 3 Cartularium monasterii de Rameseia, i. 219; charter of 1053. upon the land of the lord of Berkeley from May to November 1, estover. Another right of common (estover) was over woods Right of and forests 2. The woods in mediaeval England covered much ground and were of great economic importance. Timber was needed in many directions-for fuel 3, woodwork of the ploughs and carts, building and repairing of houses, construction of hedges. Fencing was an important operation in mediaeval husbandry, and involved an immense amount of time and labour. Enclosures were made, not with 'live' hedges or with ditches, but year by year were renewed at the sowing of the seed. There are frequent references in Domesday Book to the demand for wood for this purpose" silva ad sepes reficiendas" 4. Woods were also valuable for the cattle and swine which could feed there on acorns and beech-mast. Their number may be gauged from an entry in Domesday Book, which records the existence of nearly four thousand swine in one hundred alone, that of Barstable in Essex 5, the flesh of swine being the staple article of food in the Middle Ages. In bringing to a close this account of rural life in the Conthirteenth century, two concluding observations must be clusion. made. In the first place, attention should be drawn to the fact that there were two main types of village settlements. The typical village of the Middle Ages was the nucleated'✓ 1 1 J. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeleys (ed. Sir J. Maclean, 1883), i. 193 The right of turbary was to cut peat and turf for firing: ibid. 187. Ballard, Domesday Inquest, 167. • Seebohm has made familiar the Midland (or Mercian) type of village where the two field or three field system prevailed, and where the tenement comprised a bundle of scattered strips held in 'real' or lasting ownership. But there are other types due possibly to the" blending of different racial traditions". Four types are distinguished: (i.) The Anglian type (in Norfolk and part of Suffolk) has two characteristics: (a) the one field system, i.e. annual crops; (b) the intermixed strips are free from rights of common on the part of other villagers, and remain in the separate occupation of their owners all the year round. (ii.) The Celtic type (in the west of England and in Wales and Scotland) is known as the run-rig, its characteristic being the periodical redivision |