ALBERT R. MANN 
 LIBRARY 
 
 New York State Colleges 
 
 OF 
 
 Agriculture and Home Economics 
 
 AT 
 
 Cornell University 
 
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 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013714468 
 
ON THE 
 
 AGRICULTURAL COMIVIUNITY OF THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 
 ANB 
 
 INCLOSUEES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTIJEY 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF 
 
 E. NASSE, 
 BY Colonel H. A. Ouvry (late 9th Lancers). 
 
 " In der Beherrsoliung der Erde Kegt die Kraft des Mannes und des Staates : 
 die Grosse Eoms ist gebaut auf die ausgedehnteste und unmittelbarste Herrsoliaft 
 der Burger ilber den Boden und auf die gesohlossene Einheit dieser also festge- 
 grundeten Bauerscbaft." — Mommsen. 
 
 LONDON: 
 MACMILLAN & CO., 16, BEDFOKD STREET, COVENT GARDEN, 
 
 1871. 
 (^nblis^eb nnbcr t^e smciion of i^e Cobben €kb.) 
 
@ fjz^ ryz 
 
 BARRETT & SONS, 
 
 iiiiiS. 
 
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 lllllilliiiiii»w 
 
 11 MARK LANE. |! 
 
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PREFACE. 
 
 " If I were five-and-twenty or thirty, instead of, 
 unhappily, twice that number of years, I would take 
 Adam Smith in hand, and I would have a League 
 for free trade in Land, just as we have a League for 
 free trade in Corn. You will find just the same 
 authority in Adam Smith for the one as for the other ; 
 and if it were only taken up as it must be taken up 
 to succeed, not as a political, revolutionary, Kadical, 
 Chartist notion, but taken up on politico-economic 
 grounds, the agitation would be sure to succeed ; and 
 if you can apply free trade to land and labour too — 
 that is, by getting rid of those abominable restrictions 
 in your parish settlements, and the like — then I say 
 the men who do that will have done for England 
 probably more than we have been able to do by 
 making free trade in Corn." .... 
 
 Speech of Eichaed Cobden, 
 November 23rd, 1864. 
 
N.B. — TMs translation contains several additions to and alterations 
 of the original, made hj the Author, who has personally revised the 
 manuscript. 
 
 All those notes which are not by the Author are marked with the 
 initials of the Translator — H. A. 0. 
 
ON THE 
 
 AGRICULTURAL COMMUOTTY 
 
 MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 In the agrarian history of the nations of middle 
 Europe there is no event of greater weight, or which 
 has led to more important consequences, than the disso- 
 lution of the ancient community in the use and culture 
 of the land which was then in vogue, a,nd the establish- 
 ment of a complete independence^ and separation of 
 one property from another. But this development had 
 a more especial importance in England, inasmuch as 
 it greatly contributed to dispossess the small proprietor 
 of the soil, and to lay the foundations of that prepon- 
 derance of large landed possessions which has had 
 such an immense influence on the constitutional 
 history of that country. 
 
 Up to our time, however, the agrarian history of 
 England is a region comparatively very little explored; 
 and this may fairly excite wonder when we reflect, on 
 the one hand, by what great exertions and vigilant 
 attention the English have successively improved on 
 all other points in the progress of their civilization ; 
 and, on the other, how rich the field is in records 
 from which a knowledge might have been obtained of 
 the earlier state of its agrarian and agricultural rela- 
 tions. If then a stranger, instigated by the historical 
 importance of the question, has been induced to 
 
2 ON THE AGBIGULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 undertake the inquiry, he may perhaps obtain some 
 indulgence should he plead, as an excuse for the pos- 
 sible shortcomings in his investigations, that such were 
 inevitable on account of the dearth of predecessors in 
 the same field of research. 
 
 In one respect we have considered it necessary from 
 the commencement to limit our task ; that is to say, 
 we have omitted from our consideration not only 
 "Wales, but also all the coast counties of the West of 
 England. The agrarian history of these districts offers 
 many interesting peculiarities, but from the materials 
 now before us we cannot obtain any information as to 
 their development, even with any approximation to 
 certainty. We have also omitted the northern and 
 southern districts of the country, e.g. the county of 
 Kent, with regard to which the materials within our 
 reach were very scanty, and though in the course of this 
 research we may occasionally refer to them, our inquiry 
 is still principally confined to central and eastern 
 England. 
 
 Eemains of the old state of community of land in 
 England are still preserved at the present time, and 
 on that account we consider that it will best suit our 
 purpose to make this the starting-point of our exami- 
 nation. One glance at this fact will be sufficient to 
 rectify the error so often met with among continental 
 writers, viz. that in England, a village establishment 
 with a community of fields never existed, but that the 
 cultivation was exclusively managed by separate farms 
 with separate husbandry.^ Moreover the knowledge of 
 
 ' Thus Wilhelm Maurer writes in the Zdtschrift fiir Deutsches Beeht, on 
 the Anglo-Saxon Marks, vol. xvi, p. 203 : — 
 
 A mere casual glance at the counties of England at the present time 
 will suffice to show that isolated farms are generally the rule, and that the 
 English village is perfectly different from the German " dorf," inasmuch as 
 in the former the day labourers, small shopkeepers, and innkeepers, live in 
 contiguous dwellings laid out in streets ; the actual farmers, although be- 
 longing to the village community, living on greater or smaller farms 
 scattered over the property. 
 
 These conditions, looking back to old times, lead us to more certain 
 conclusions, that settlements with isolated farms, were then the most 
 prevalent. 
 
 But the village of the present time, as Professor Hanssen truly 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 3 
 
 this remnant of a land community which has been 
 handed down to us clears the way to an easier com- 
 prehension of the authentic mediseyal records which 
 refer to this subject. 
 
 In order to arrive at this knowledge two sources are 
 at our command, one/ " The report of the Select 
 Committee on Commons Inclosure, instituted in order 
 to frame laws for the dissolution of common holdings, 
 by order of the House of Commons, in 1844 " ; and the 
 other, the very carefully prepared descriptions of 
 agriculture in the several counties of England, which 
 were published by the then Board of Agriculture, under 
 the conduct of Sir John Sinclair^ at the close of the 
 last century and the commencement of the present one. 
 The Parliamentary Committee endeavoured by a 
 searching inquiry to examine the conditions which 
 were affected by the contemplated legislation, and the 
 descriptions of the Board of Agriculture are, even now, 
 the best representations which we possess of the agri- 
 cultural state of a great country, composed especially 
 with regard to the important question of the com- 
 munity in land and inclosures.^ 
 
 The experienced witnesses who were examined before 
 the Committee in 1844 agreed in their information 
 
 remarks, is not identical with the extinct village of the agricultural com- 
 munity of former times, and the ancient common lands of the old villages 
 have been divided amongst the lands of the present isolated farms. 
 
 He who travels in the marshes of North-West Germany, and continually 
 finds only small shopkeepers, artificers, and day labourers living together, 
 while the farmers inhabit isolated farms here and there outside the villages, 
 deceives himself, if he supposes that the latter kind of settlement was the 
 original one. It has been the case for centuries that farmhouses have 
 been built outside the villages on the lands brought together by exchange or 
 purchase, and this still continues. 
 
 ' Report of the Select Committee on Commo/is Inclosure, together 
 with the Minutes of Evidence, 1844. 
 
 ^ We have been unfortunately obliged to quote these descriptions some- 
 times from the several original editions, and sometimes from the well- 
 known epitomized works of Marshall, as in the course of this work at times 
 only exclusively the latter, and at times the former, were at our disposition. 
 
 ^ Our knowledge of the remains of mediaeval agricultural administration 
 would be much extended if we had at our disposition the materials 
 collected in the decrees of the Inclosure Commission instituted for the 
 dissolution of the community in common holdings. 
 
 b2 
 
4 ON THE AGBIGULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 that in many parts of the country plots of arable land 
 in the same township lay intermixed and uninclosed, 
 so that the lands of a rural property consisted of narrow 
 parcels lying scattered in a disconnected manner all 
 over the extent of the village district [Borfflur). These 
 arable parcels were for the separate use of individual 
 possessors from seed-time to harvest, after which they 
 were open and common to all for pasturage. They 
 were designated "open commonable intermixed fields," 
 and also "lammas lands," because " lammas " is the 
 fete Petri ad vincula on the 1st of August — or, ac- 
 cording to the old calendar by which the reckoning 
 was then taken, the 13th August — which was the period 
 of the commencement of the common rights of pas- 
 turage. But there was, however, a difference in this 
 right, inasmuch as in some places it was only the 
 possessors of the land which lay intermixed in arable 
 plots, and in others, other classes of the population ■ 
 who had the right to fallow and stubble pasturage.^ 
 Those, however, who were not possessors of soil, found 
 many difficulties in making good their right of pasture 
 before a court of justice, even though they had exer- 
 cised it for a length of time. (N. 300.) The source 
 of this right is partly to be referred to the fact that in 
 many villages the lordship of the soil was vested in 
 the neighbouring towns, and the collective freemen 
 claimed the right of pasturage as lords of the soil over 
 the urban villages, and partly because, from very 
 ancient times in many places, not only the owners of 
 the soil, but all possessors of homesteads had a right 
 to partake of the common fallow and stubble pasturage.^ 
 For the cultivation of the commonable fields there 
 existed universally a field constraint (flurzwang), and 
 
 ' George Wingrove Cooke, on Inclosures and Rights of Commons 4tli 
 edition, London, 1864, pp. 47-50, calls the last kind of commonable fields 
 " lammas lands," and the first, " shack lands." For the rest he obtained 
 his information concerning these conclusions almost exclusively from the 
 cited report, and complains that the juridical author pays no attention what- 
 ever to the commonable lands. 
 
 ' Report on Inclosures, No. 4352, and "Wingrove Cooke, I.e. 48. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 5 
 
 in most of the midland counties, almost without excep- 
 tion, the old three-field husbandry — generally, 1st, 
 wheat, 2nd, oats or beans, 3rd, fallow. (N. 1422 and 
 3360.) Exceptionally there appears also to have been 
 manor properties, on which the arable land was free 
 from the compulsory rule as to a succession of crops, 
 but on which the common fallow and stubble pasture 
 held good, by which certainly the freedom of the culti- 
 vator was scarcely less restrained than if the usual 
 field constraint had held good. (N. 6151, 5155.) In 
 very numerous meadows this custom prevailed; the 
 possessors farmed their parcels separately for growing 
 hay until after the hay harvest, i.e. till the 6th July 
 (Midsummer-day according to the old style), or the 
 middle of July; then the whole of the meadows to 
 Candlemas or the middle of February were common 
 open pasturage. The permanent pasturage as unparti- 
 tioned common land, was in uninterrupted common 
 use, but chiefly in the following manner : the occupiers 
 of the small holdings had merely the right of use of 
 the common pasturage, the actual property being vested 
 in the lord of the manor, a condition that will be fully 
 entered into hereafter from old authentic records. 
 None of the experts who were examined could give any 
 precise information concerning the extent of this 
 system of husbandry in 1844„ but they had no doubt 
 that it was very considerable, especially prevailing, 
 according to the opinion of one of the best informed, 
 in the parts of the country which had been cultivated 
 for the first time, and on the best kinds of soil. (N. 
 185, 186.) 
 
 Very precise reports on the community in land, and 
 especially on the three-field husbandry in different 
 parts of England, are given in the aforesaid description 
 of the counties, which were published and issued by 
 the Board of Agriculture, In nearly all parts of the 
 country, particularly in the midland and 'eastern 
 counties, but also in the west, for instance in Wiltshire, 
 and in the south, as in Surrey, and in the north, as in 
 Yorkshire, extensive open and common fields were to 
 
6 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 be found. In Northamptonshire, out of 317 parishes, 
 89 were in this condition ;i in Oxfordshire, over 100 f 
 in Warwickshh:e, some 50,000 acres;' in Berkshire, 
 half the county f in Wiltshire, the largest part f in 
 Huntingdonshire, out of 240,000 acres— the whole area 
 — 130,000 were commonable meadows, commons, and 
 common fields.^ Generally, the common lands, with 
 the exception of the homesteads and farmyards, were 
 divided into three principal divisions : arable land and 
 meadows (both in separate possession but with common 
 regulated rights of use), and common pasturage. 
 Sometimes may be added a fourth part, a smaller 
 inclosed portion of the common land excepted from the 
 field constraint, in the vicinity of the homesteads. 
 
 ' As succession of crops on the arable lands for this 
 community from Yorkshire down towards the south, 
 and from the North Sea as far as Wiltshire, a three- 
 field husbandry generally prevailed ; only exceptionally 
 in some districts, as for instance in Oxfordshire here 
 and there on good soil ;' in Huntingdonshire* and in 
 Wiltshire," also four-field husbandry, viz. fallow, wheat 
 or barley, beans or oats, barley or wheat. This 
 last system may have arisen out of a two-field hus- 
 bandry, as it has been likewise reported that such a 
 system held good always in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, 
 particularly on poor soils,"* and which some ten years 
 earlier Arthur Young found also in Lincolnshire in the 
 open fields, 1st, fallow, 2nd, corn of some sort." Quite 
 
 ' A Review of the Eeports of the Board of Agriculture from the Midland 
 Department of England. By Mr. Marshall. York, 1815, p. 334. 
 " Ibid. p. 485, Lc. 
 ' Ibid. p. 284, Lc. 
 
 ■* A Review, &o., frjm the Southern Department, York, 1817, p. 48. 
 " Ibid. p. 191, l.c. 
 
 " General View of the Agriculture of Huntingdonshire. Bv H Stone 
 1793. J ■ ■ 
 
 ' Marshall, Midland Department, p. 452. 
 
 ' Ibid. p. 409, Lc. 
 
 ' Southern Department, p. 191. 
 
 '° Midland Department, p. 452 ; Southern Department, p. 215. 
 
 " A Farmer's Tour through the East of England. London, 1771, p. 453. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 7 
 
 isolated, however, is the declaration of the same writer 
 that in Suffolk there were commonable lands on which 
 always two years' fallow succeeded to one wheat crop/ 
 Of particular places only, was it reported that there, 
 five or six exhaustive crops followed one after another 
 without either fallow or manure, and then one fallow 
 year with a heavy manuring ; but it was impossible to 
 judge from the information how far in these successions 
 of crops a degenerated three- or two-field husbandry 
 was involved. The witnesses all agree in their infor- 
 mation confcerning the extraordinary dispersion of the 
 arable plots with common village husbandry. The 
 arable land attached to a possession lay in high 
 ploughed-up little ridges, scattered over the whole 
 extent of the township, and in many places the larger 
 possessors had, out of 100 acres, at the most two or 
 three together in one parcel. 
 
 The manuring was done principally by turning the 
 common flocks of sheep on to the fallow at night time, 
 and also in a measure by stall manure ; which was, 
 however, very scanty, on account of the free common 
 pasturage. We find also that in the districts in which 
 this agrarian system prevailed, the dwelling together of 
 the farmers and small proprietors in the village was 
 constantly the custom. The description enlarges con- 
 cerning Northamptonshire, and this is written by a 
 Scotchman (J. Donaldson). It strikes the relator, that 
 in Scotland the management was carried on by separate 
 farms, while the English proprietors, not only in 
 Northamptonshire but also in other parts, still lived 
 crowded in villages. Marshall, however, remarks that 
 this has its limits, and only applies to those places 
 where the above-mentioned community of land had 
 existed ; when, however, the land was inclosed on 
 being first taken into cultivation, as was the case in 
 the west, there were dwelling-houses and farm-buildings 
 on the lands belonging to the same.^ 
 
 ' View of the Agriculture of Suffolk. By Arthur Youug. 1794, p. 14 
 ' Marshall, Midland Department, pp. 334, 348, et seq. 
 
8 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 An observation which constantly recurs in the 
 description of counties, and which is of the highest 
 importance with regard to their agricultural history is, 
 that by far most frequently, small landed properties 
 were found to be in the aforesaid state of a land com- 
 munity. In Huntingdonshire, for instance, in the 
 inclosed portion of the county especially, large farms 
 commanded a rent of from i200 to ^£500 yearly ; in 
 the region of the open fields the farms bore commonly 
 a rent of from £.60 to £150. The relative state of 
 Northamptonshire is similar, where in the inclosed 
 districts the farms are, on an average, double the size 
 of those in the uninclosed. In Oxfordshire almost ex- 
 clusively are to be found small properties in the open 
 fields. The official reports of Buckinghamshire* and 
 Wiltshire^ are especially interesting in this point of 
 view. There the uninclosed commons were still 
 divided into yards of land, yardlands, the mediaeval 
 vergatcB terrce, the Anglo-Saxon "gyrde lands." All 
 yardlands were, as it appears, originally of equal value, 
 but of a different size, according to their condition of 
 soil and position. In Buckinghamshire every twenty- 
 eight to forty acres of land carried with it the corres- 
 ponding right of pasturage. In Wiltshire the yearly 
 value of these smaU peasant properties varied from 
 £18 to £25 sterling ; a few however reached £40. To 
 a yardland of £20 sterling yearly rent, belonged about 
 two acres of meadow, and eighteen acres of arable land 
 ''which lay scattered amongst the common fields in 
 about eighteen or twenty plots), as well as a share in 
 the common pasturage, and other common rights of 
 iise. The extent of the right of pasturage was usually 
 for forty sheep and as many cows as the peasant 
 could maintain through the winter. The occupier of 
 these small hides held them originally by copyhold, 
 which however gradually in the course of time became 
 
 ' Marshall, Midland Department, p. 520, et seq. 
 ' Marshall, Southern Department, p. 203, et seq. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 9 
 
 converted into a lease for three lives, or into a freehold. 
 The consolidation or fusing of these peasant properties 
 into large farms thence followed in rapid succession, 
 and on many of them the old farm-buildings stood 
 deserted and in ruins ; but the greater part were still 
 separately farmed. These peasant properties originally 
 made up the greatest p9,rt of the manors to which they 
 belonged ; there was only one large farm on each pro- 
 perty, the domain of the lord of the manor, which, as 
 a rule, lay separate from that of the peasant. "Williams, 
 in the Archceologia, vol. xxxiii. p. 270, describes a 
 perfectly similar constitution of a manor in Oxford- 
 shire, and traces it by records into the sixteenth 
 century. The manor consisted of sixty-four yardlands, 
 of which th,e greater part had gradually passed from 
 the possession of the peasant to the private use of the 
 lord of the mapor. To each yardland belonged a 
 house and farmyard, twenty-four to twentyreight and 
 three-quarter acres of arable land, a share in the com- 
 monable meadows, which for each, came to some 
 seven and a half or eight and a half acres, and the 
 right to turn out eight oxen or cows, or six horses and 
 forty sheep on to the common pasturage. The relator 
 considers it likely that in ancient times, in p-ddition, 
 there was a right to as much firewood as was 
 necessary, and also wood for building purposes, and 
 for erecting the requisite fences. The arable land lay 
 in numerous small plots of half an acre and under, 
 mingled together in confusion, and, as Williams writes, 
 was farmed by a four-field husbandry (wheat, beans, 
 oats, fallow), while two centuries before the three-field 
 husbandry was there commonly in use. 
 
 These witnesses, therefore, sufficiently show that in 
 by far the greater part of England the old English pea- 
 santry,^ as we still see them even in a measure in 
 
 ' The use of tlie word (hauerschaft) here translated peasantry, must not 
 lead us to suppose that ouf present agricultural labourers are the class 
 meant ; it rather here means yeomanry, which class are now represented by 
 small tradesmen and mechanics. — H. A. 0. 
 
10 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 more modern times, held the land in common, precisely 
 as the present villagers of the greater part of middle 
 Europe hold theirs. But with regard to this, let us 
 hear the views of a man in modern times who had an 
 intimate knowledge of the agrarian constitution of his 
 native country, and was far more fitted to judge of 
 these matters than others. Marshall has often ex- 
 pressed his conviction, that several centuries ago the 
 soil of nearly the whole of England lay in an un- 
 inclosed condition, and was more or less in a com- 
 monable state. In the treatise^ in which he enters into 
 these matters he gives as his opinion that there 
 was some division and use of land in several parts 
 of England, and that the most central portions of the 
 country were throughout not essentially different. 
 Every village, he says, in the immediate vicinity, 
 of the dwelling-houses and farm-buildings, had some 
 few inclosed grass lands for the rearing of calves, 
 or for other cattle which it might be thought neces- 
 sary to keep near the village (the common farmstead 
 or homestall). Around these home inclosures lay the 
 arable land, divided into fields of nearly equal size, 
 and usually three in number, on which winter and 
 summer crops and fallow followed in succession. In the 
 lowest grounds, " and in the water-formed base of. 
 the rivered valleys, or in the boggy dips adjoining the 
 arable land, lay meadow ground for hay harvest." The 
 more distant land served for pasture and wood, but 
 the pasturage was of two distinct kinds ; the inlying 
 portion of a better kind was called " stinted," on 
 which there was a limit as to numbers and kinds of 
 cattle, milch cows, draught cattle, and others which 
 required better food during the summer, and the 
 common pasture, on which every one could turn out 
 as many cattle during the summer as he had fodder 
 to support during the winter. Thus the whole acre- 
 age of the township was divided into one great farm 
 
 ' On the Appropriation and Inclosure of Commonable and Intermixed 
 Lands, by Mr. Marshall, London, 1801, p. 1, et seq. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 11 
 
 A*-]iich was made use of by the joint tenants in 
 common. It is only in the extreme west, says 
 Marshall, that this system has never prevailed ; there, 
 from very early times up to the present, the custom 
 held good for the lord of the manor to assign portions 
 oi the common pasturage to the inhabitants who had 
 rights of use, to be ploughed up for wheat cultivation, 
 restricted however to two crops. After a period of two 
 years the land was again thrown open for a lengthened 
 period, and returned to 'common pasturage, and a fresh 
 portion of the common pasturage was broken up. 
 
 For the reasons which we have already stated at the 
 commencement of this work, it is not our intention to 
 enter into the question of this wild field-grass hus- 
 bandry, nor the brand husbandry which likewise 
 prevailed in the west. In the agricultural description 
 of Cornwall, these systems are described as only cus- 
 tomary on outlying and poor lands, while the better 
 plots in the vicinity of the homesteads at that time 
 were already commonly farmed by a well-regulated 
 field-grass husbandry. ^ We cannot however refrain 
 from remarking, that it is altogether in the nature 
 of things, that with this, as well as with every 
 other system of husbandry in which the period of a 
 common use far exceeded that of a particular use, 
 ■ generally the several portions of the whole extent of 
 the acreage were not the private property of indi- 
 viduals. There was no advantage in retaining as 
 private property that which in ten years' time would 
 be of no practical value ; a constant fresh partitioning 
 of the plots of the district each time they were broken 
 up for cultivation was much more convenient. Private 
 property first came into vogue with arable land, on 
 which private use, in relation- to common use, had a 
 longer duration. 
 
 On precisely similar grounds, where the arable land 
 was private property, the meadows were generally 
 found to be in common ; so that the plots destined 
 
 ' See extracts from the reports of G. B. Morgan and Fraser, in Marshall, 
 Southern Department, pp. 525 and 531. 
 
12 ON TEE AGBiaULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 each time for hay harvest were assigned to indi- 
 vidual joint ovmers, in alternating positions by an 
 allotment which was constantly renewed. Since mea- 
 dows were neither cultivated nor manured, any 
 assignment of particular spots for cultivation was not 
 necessary ; it was only for the short period of hay 
 harvest that each had his portion assigned to him, 
 and it appeared much more convenient always to make 
 a fresh partition, as the portions assigned were often 
 so exceedingly small that it was most difficult to retain 
 them as separate property during the long period of 
 the common use of the land. That such common 
 meadows have been preserved in great numbers in 
 England, even to the most modern times, was made 
 clear to the Committee of 1844, especially by Mr. 
 Blamire, who, from his office as a commissioner for 
 the commutation of tithes, was very intimately ac- 
 quainted with the agrarian condition of the country. 
 The usages with regard to the partitioning of meadows 
 for growing hay were of a most varied nature. The 
 most general practice, however, was to divide the 
 meadow land into as many plots as there were persons 
 who had the right of pasture, and then to distribute 
 the particular portions among them by lot (lot 
 meadows). Very often, however, the division by lot was 
 permanent, and the use of each lot for hay harvest was 
 then changeable by turns to all those interested, so 
 that he who one year had lot 1, next year would have 
 lot 2 (rotation meadow). Two plans were attached to 
 the report, one representing the lot meadow, and the 
 other the rotation meadow, On the manor described 
 by Williams, in Oxfordshire, there were also lot 
 meadows, which were divided into "hams," each 
 bearing a particular name, after ancient offices and 
 handicraftsmen of the manor which no longer exist 
 such as the great steward's ham, the water hayward's 
 ham, the water steward's ham, the smith's ham the 
 constable's ham, &c. &c. These divisions since a 
 lengthened period were allotted among the possessors 
 of yardlands for hay harvest ; there being, however, a 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 13 
 
 very considerable difference in the quality of the hay 
 crops. Each hide had its particular mark ; the marks 
 were thrown into a hat, and at each hay harvest the 
 several plots of meadow land were thus distributed 
 by lot.i 
 
 It was not, however, the meadows exclusively, but 
 occasionally also the arable land, which underwent this 
 change in private use (severalty holding), as Mr. Blamire 
 officially stated before the Inclosure Committee. But this 
 arable land was not changed annually in the same man- 
 ner as the meadow land, each owner retained the portion 
 which fell to his lot throughout the usual succession of 
 crops. Unfortunately the nature of these successions of 
 crops, was not given, neither is the place mentioned 
 where these shifting severalties in arable land occurred. 
 We have tried in vain to obtain further information con- 
 cerning these very interesting conditions, which might 
 form an instructive supplement to our Gihoferschaften, 
 in the district of Treves. In no other place, either in 
 the writings of ancient or modern authors, have we 
 ever found such an agrarian arrangement mentioned. 
 However frequent it may have been with regard to .the 
 meadows, it must have been very rare in respect to 
 the arable land ; however it would be well worth the 
 trouble to make a closer research into the archives of 
 the Inclosure Committee in order to ascertain 
 whether similar conditions of rights existed On the 
 fields which were about .to be separated under their 
 authority. 
 
 After this cursive glance at the cotomtmity of land, 
 which in England we see extending into the most 
 modern times, we will pass to an examination of it 
 through the evidence of ancient records ; which, how- 
 ever, we shall have frequent occasion to illustrate in 
 detail by more modern reports on the remains of 
 agrarian conditions. 
 
 Although agrarian relations have a tendency to a 
 more lasting duration than other human institutions, 
 still it appears necessary, in order to be correct, to 
 
 ' Archseologia, London, 1849. Vol. xxxiii. p. 275. 
 
14 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 make a distinction between different periods, of which 
 the first and most suitable to our purpose will be that 
 from the Anglo-Saxon times to the Norman Conquest. 
 The greater part of the earlier researches into the 
 history and constitution of the Anglo-Saxons gives no 
 information whatever on the question Avhich is now 
 before us. Certainly, something is to be found in the 
 writings of Phillips, Palgrave and Leo, on the district 
 associations and land settlements ; but K. Maurer, in 
 his admirable researches into the state of the Anglo- 
 Saxon laws,^ has estimated these remarks at their true 
 value. Of more recent inquirers it is well known that 
 Kemble has sought to prove, that the constitution of 
 the Anglo-Saxon commonwealth was founded on mark 
 associations. But Kemble was never in a position 
 authentically to prove the agrarian community of 
 these mark associations, and it is with full justice 
 that the careful author, K. Schmid, says, " that 
 true mark associations {i.e. communities) existed, the 
 organization of which was' founded on a com- 
 munity of pasture and wood rights, has never been 
 proved by Kemble, however much he may have written 
 concerning pretended mark associations in England." ^ 
 With regard then to the greater mark associations of 
 village administration, which are exclusively mentioned 
 by Kemble as to be distinguished by ga and scire, 
 K. Maurer justly observes, that we can learn nothing 
 in that respect either from Kemble or any of his prede- 
 cessors, while we must conclude, from the nature of the 
 partitioning of land according to families, as well as 
 from the occurrence of the word thorp, and other 
 similar designations of names of places, kc, that, besides 
 numerous separate farms, not less numerous villages as 
 well, came from the same root. Unfortunately, how- 
 ever, he was not in a position to fill up these lacuna.' 
 
 ' Munchener kritisclie Ueberschau, 1 Bd. 1853, S. 63, ff. 
 ' Gesetze der Angelsachsen,' 2 Aiifl., Leipsig, 1858, in Glossar. s.v. 
 mearc, S. 631. ' 
 
 ' Page 63, L c. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 15 
 
 The results, therefore, of recent researches lead to 
 the conclusion that the sources are very meagre, and 
 the traces very faint, wherewith to draw even an 
 imperfect picture of the agrarian community of the 
 Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 The names of places show that, among the Saxons, 
 only the dwelling-place — that is, house and homestead 
 — was inclosed ; the arable land and the pastures being 
 open and unfenced. Out of 1,200 names of places 
 which Leo collected from the first volume of Kemble's 
 " Codex Diplomat, ^vi Saxonici," 137 were formed 
 with tun.^ This word, it is well known, is identical 
 with the modern "town," the Dutch tuin (garden), 
 and the German zaun, and was, as E. Schmid 
 remarks, less used by the Anglo-Saxons to signify 
 "that wherewith a space is inclosed, than the inclosed 
 space itself." We may, however, see very plainly that 
 it was principally house and homestead which bore this 
 name ; for instance, in the laws of Alfred I. § 2, in 
 cyninges tune ; § 13, on eorles tune. Even at the 
 present day the courtyard in the country in England is 
 signified by the word town.^ Apparently, as was also 
 the case in Germany, not only the individual home- 
 steads, but also several situated near each other, were 
 surrounded by an inclosure ; which explains the reason 
 why not only the homestead, but also the whole village, 
 was called "tun." In many places — for example in 
 the laws of Athelstan II., Fr. § 2, where an expiatory 
 fine is to be divided among the poor ; as well as in 
 Edgar IV. c. 8 — which we have yet to notice — the word 
 "tun" cannot be intended to be used for individual 
 homesteads, but only for places, a signification which 
 later became the ruling one. 
 
 Among a considerable number of names of places, two 
 other root-words occur, which Leo justly remarks 
 are synonyms of "tun," "ham" and " wurS," 
 
 ' Eectitudines .Singularum Personarum, Halle, 1842, p. 23, et seq. 
 " " Words and Places," by Rev. A. Taylor, London, 1864, p. 19 ; quoted 
 in Quarterly Review, July, 1864. 
 
16 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 " weorSig," " vur^ig." He calls attention to the fact 
 that this last word often distinctly takes the place 
 of " tun " in the names of places, as in the case of 
 Cataractona, the Latinized form of Cetrihtworthig. ^ On 
 this account also in the laws of Ina, c. A, 40 " Ceorles 
 weorSig sceal be6n wintres and sumeres betyned," 
 in the " vetus versio," which, probably at the latest 
 dates in the times of the first Norman kings, is pro- 
 perly translated " rustic! curtillum ^ debet esse 
 clausum eestate simul et hyeme." There was no 
 ground for differing from this, and translating "in- 
 closed land," or " inclosure," as Schmid has done ; or 
 " praedium," according to Lye.^ 
 
 In designating the house and homestead as the 
 inclosed spot, it was intended to imply that the rest of 
 the land as a rule was not permanently inclosed, and 
 it is certainly a strange error in Leo * (though Kemble ° 
 agrees with him), when, in direct opposition to the 
 fact concerning the derivation of the word " tun " in 
 so many names of places^ he makes it imply the per- 
 manent inclosure of the fields by hedges as at the 
 present time in England, whereas for centuries these 
 inclosures have been in progress as one of the most 
 important of agricultural novelties. 
 
 Outside the dwelling-place and yard belonging to it 
 we find already among the Anglo-Saxons, small parcels 
 of land permanently inclosed, for the pasture of cattle, 
 
 ' " Loco citato," p. 52. 
 
 ' Curtillum, i.e. a small village consisting of a few houses, a small farm, 
 or rustic dwelling, having a garden, curtilage. — H. A. O. 
 
 ' Of similar dues in Germany, see G. L. v. Maurer " Geschichte der 
 Frohnliofe," iii. s. 195. Already, according to the law books, each farmyard 
 was to be hedged in by its possessor. — Sach's " Landrecht," ii. 49, §2; 
 Schwab, " Landrecht," W. c. 398. Also later writers repeat this and 
 similar instructions, that e.g. in Enkenboch and Warterburg in the 
 Palatinate, " every one shall repair and hedge in his small farm." In a 
 similar manner also the old Jute law prescribes (from 1240 a.d.) iii. 
 chap. 57, van thiinen tho makende (on making hedges) " that every 
 village shall be inclosed by a hedge," and gives detailed rules for the 
 duty of every villager to put up his part of the common fence which 
 inclosed the whole village as well as the single farmsteads. 
 
 ' " Loco citato, " p. 26. 
 
 '^ " Codex Diplomaticus Anglo-Saxonum," III. p. xl. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 17 
 
 which exceptionally are kept near human dwellings, and 
 are not turned out on the common pasturage, or for a 
 kind of cultivation requiring particular labour. We 
 see frequently mentioned in the ancient documents, 
 inclosed grass land, gerstun, syntrimaede (a meadow 
 withdrawn from the community in land) ; further, it 
 occurs, especially in the boundary descriptions of the 
 grants of land; stodfald, an inclosed plot for horses 
 (" Cod. Dipl." Nos. 356 and 1193) ; ^ oxena gehaeg (loco 
 citato No. 769) ; oxena wic (1. c. 1204), oxen inclosures; 
 sceap-hammas (" Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon " 
 I. p. 153), inclosures for sheep, flax hammas (I.e. 
 p. 208), an inclosed spot for cultivating flax. 
 
 Opposed to these permanently inclosed plots, in the 
 old agrarian arrangements of the greater part of the 
 German races, the rest of the land was only inclosed 
 when it was withdra"\vn from the community for the 
 purpose of cultivation. The cultivated arable land 
 from seed-time till the end of the harvest, and the 
 meadows from the commencement of the growth of 
 the grass in spring to the end of the haymaking 
 season, were inclosed with fences and preserved 
 against the access of cattle and wild beasts, &c. &c. 
 At the conclusion of this private use, the land again 
 reverted to common pasturage. It was necessary, 
 then, to put up fences at each inclosed season, which 
 in the time of common pasture, were again either 
 partially or wholly removed. 
 
 The . inclosed abodes of the Germanic peoples 
 everywhere comprised, in addition to the house and 
 courtyard, as much land as was requisite to form a 
 garden, kitchen-garden, and for flax and other culture 
 which required a constant protection against the 
 common stubble and fallow pasture as well as wild 
 beasts ; also smaller inclosures for cattle, which re- 
 quired especial care and attention, could be put up in 
 
 1 u-\ 
 
 ' Ettmiiller Lexicon Anglo-Saxonum," p. 735 ; translates st6dfald, 
 annentum equomm ; but the sense given above in this place cannot be 
 doubtful.— See Kemble in " Codex. Diplomat." III. p. xxiv. Falud, laid, 
 is the "later fold," e.g. Sheepfold. 
 
 C 
 
18 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 the farmyards in the village. As the population in- 
 creased, these inclosures in the villages were found to 
 be too small for the abovementioned purpose, and 
 consequently isolated plots of land, very fertile and 
 w^ situated, were inclosed outside the village to meet 
 the requirement. There can be no question that 
 there were small inclosures of a similar character in 
 England at the Anglo-Saxon period, although on 
 account of the poverty of our sources, we may not be 
 able to distinguish in every individual case ^ the primi- 
 tive ones appertaining to the homestead, from the 
 secondary one outside the village. 
 
 Some haK-century ago, or less, the custom of 
 inclosing the fields periodically — already abrogated a 
 long time since in Germany in the village and three- 
 field husbandry — existed here and there in England ; 
 for example, in Nottingham, where each 12th August, 
 at the commencement of the common right of pas- 
 turage, the inhabitants of the town issued out on to 
 the acreage, and threw down the hedges and destroyed 
 the gates, which at the beginning of the seed-time 
 were again set up by the landlord. ^ 
 
 Anglo-Saxon ofl&cial records bear testimony to this 
 constant and repeated work of fencing. We have, 
 besides the so-called " rectitudines singularum per- 
 sonarum," also two records in which the agricultural 
 labour of serfs is, enumerated (Codex Diplom. N. 461) 
 and in the "Cod. Diplom." the double inventory of 
 the rural service of the " ceorlas of Hysseburnan," 
 No. 977 and 1077. The "gebur," we read in the 
 first record, " acertyninge xv gyrde oSSe diche 
 fiftyne (the peasant shall hedge 16 yards, or ditch 
 15 yards)"; and, in the second, "and xvi. gyrda 
 gavoltininga eac on hiora agenre hwile (he shall 
 also hedge 16 yards as service, in his own free time)." 
 Thus, fencing belonged to the regular work of the 
 
 ' On the difiference between the original small inclosure belonging to the 
 homestead, and the later Bmaller garden and meadow plots outside the 
 Tallage, vide Hanssen in a review of the German edition of this work ia 
 the Gottingm gelehrtm Ajizeigen, 1870, p. 1329. 
 
 ^ Report on Commons Inclosure, 1844, N. 3204. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 19 
 
 peasants. The necessary wood niust have been very 
 important, and it is on this account that Domesday 
 Book refers so frequently to forests used especially for 
 this purpose : " silva or nemus ad clausuram, ad sepes, 
 ad sepes reficiendas, ad sepes et domus," once also 
 "rispalia ad sepes." ^ In this regularly recurring work, 
 as well as in the great demand for wood to erect these 
 dead fences, there lies a proof that the inclosures were 
 not made for a permanency, either with a live hedge, 
 or with a ditch. 
 
 In the common village husbandry system, it was not 
 the separate plots of individual possessors that were 
 inclosed in common, but the whole of the parcels of 
 the village acreage cultivated wi^h winter or summer 
 crops, or destined for haymaking. Of these common 
 inclosures, and thus of the village husbandry, a remark- 
 able testimony is to be found in the laws of King Ina, 
 c. 42 : " Gif ceorlas gearstun haebben gemaenne, oSSe 
 ofeer gedalland to tynanne, and haebben sume getyned 
 hiora dael, sume naebben — and etten hiora gemaenan 
 . aceras oSSe gaers, gan Jja fionne, Jje |jaet geat agan 
 and gebete (n) ]?am oSrum, \e hiora dael getynedne 
 haebben, ]?one ae (f) werdlan ]>& ffaer gedon sie." 
 Literally, " when peasants have to inclose a grass in- 
 closure or other portioned land, and some have fenced 
 their part and others not, and — eat their common 
 arable or grass down, those to whom the gap belongs 
 shall go to the others who had fenced their portions, 
 to repair the damage which has been done," &c. &c. 
 Price and Schmid remark very justly that there is 
 a hiatus after naebben, which they fill up from Ina, 
 c. 40 : " und recen heora neahgebures ceap in," and 
 let his neighbours' cattle in. Each had his hedge to 
 make at the boundary of the common fields, as well as 
 elsewhere in the common village husbandry according 
 to some laws ; each of those interested in the property 
 had to fence his plot in the winter and summer fields^ 
 
 "A General Introduction to Domesday Book," by Sir H. Ellis. 
 London, 1833, vol. i. p. 100, f. 
 ' Hanssen, " Zeitsokrift fUr du gesammte Staatswiasensohaft," bd. xxi. 
 
 c2 
 
20 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 where it touched on the houndary. Every one was 
 then answerable to the rest of the common [share- 
 holders for his own hedge, in a similar manner as it 
 was prescribed in the Jute Law (L. iii. eh. 58), and, 
 not indeed for the field fence, but the -village one, in the 
 Abbey Prum. (Si quid faratum fuerit in curte per noc- 
 tem et per sepem exierit,componet ille per cujus glavem^ 
 exierit, et si per totam, component omnes de viUa.)^ 
 
 It is well known that there are two opinions con- 
 cerning the nature of the separation of the arable land 
 from that used as pasturage among the oldest German 
 races ; one is, that there existed a wild field-grass 
 •husbandry which took particular spots from the whole 
 acreage in in-egular succession by turns, and brought 
 them under the plough, which after they had been 
 used for several years again reverted to pasturage : a 
 system of husbandry which we have already spoken of 
 as having been prevalent to a great extent in the west 
 of England even down to the most modem times.^ The 
 other is that, from the first appearance of the German 
 tribes in history, there was a permanent separation of 
 
 ' Glavem, here is put for clavem ; from clavis, in its mediaeval sense of 
 locus clausus. — H. A. O. 
 
 = "Registr. Prum." I. 695, at G. L. v. Maurer, "Frohnliofe III. 
 p. 317. 
 
 " The passage in Tacitus above aUuded to, is as follows : " Agri pro 
 numero cultorum ab universis per vices occupantnr, quos mox inter se 
 secundum dignationem partiunter ; faciUtatem partiendi camporum spatia 
 praestant. Arva perannos mutant et superest ager ; nee enim cum ubertate 
 et ampUtudine soli labore contendunt, ut pomaria conserunt, et prata sepa- 
 rent, et hortos rigent : sola terrae seges imperatur." 
 
 Xow the question is, what is the meaning of Tacitus ? Murphy's trans- 
 lation is evidently wrong ; neither can we admit the readinc " per vicos," 
 instead of " per vices." We consider the sense to be, that the°Germans cul- 
 tivated their lands by turns, and not that they wandered to different places 
 
 like the Scythians. As Horace, Lib. ui, Ode 24 : 
 
 Campestres meUds Scythaj. 
 (Quorum plaustra vagaa ritfe trahunt domos) 
 
 Vivunt, et rigidi Getas 
 Immetata quibus jugera liberas 
 Fruges et Cererem ferunt ; 
 Kec cultura placet longeor annua. 
 — Ficie Appendix. H A O 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 21 
 
 the arable land and pasturage, ^nd that arable land 
 was cultivated according to the rule that at a later 
 period prevailed in the greater part of middle Europe, 
 and, as we have seen, in the eastern and midland 
 counties of England, in which a three-field husbandry- 
 was most generally prevalent.^ 
 
 In Anglo-Saxon sources there is much which in- 
 dicates that, from their first formation, a permanent 
 separation of pasture and grass land had been the rule. 
 The records concerning land concessions mention 
 universally the number of hides of conceded land 
 and their constituent parts. The formulae in which 
 this was done are collected by Kemble (" Codex 
 Diplom." vol. i. p. 38, et seq.). They are generally 
 expressed thus : " so many hides cum campis, pascuis, 
 pratis, silvis;" or "cum omnibus ad se pertinentibus, 
 campis, pascuis," &c. ; so that the " campi," as arable 
 land, were separated from the pastures and meadows. 
 Sometimes, in rare cases, in the representation of the 
 principal component parts of the hides, the arable 
 land was completely omitted, and the appertaining 
 pasture, meadow and wood, was alone mentioned. For 
 example ; " cum silva, quae eidem telluri adjacet, ut 
 cum pratis, pascuis, aquarum rivulis;" or "cum 
 omnibus utensilibus, pratis videlicet, pascuis, silvis." 
 Of these different appurtenances, only the meadows, 
 and sometimes the rights to mast and pasturage on 
 the common and royal lands, were distinctly laid 
 down; but it is clearly visible, from these represen- 
 tations of the " prata," "pascua," as appurtenances of 
 the hide, that the arable land was separate from the 
 pasture. It is a further proof of the separation of 
 the arable land from the pasture, that the yrthland 
 
 ' It is well known that opinions on this subject differ. Waetz, in the 
 " History of German Administration," vol. i., edition 2nd, p. 93, et seq., 
 is the last advocate of the opinion that the Germans in the time of Tacitus 
 husbanded according to the rules of a three-field husbandry ; while the 
 opposite view, which considers that the passage in Tacitus ("Geimania," 
 c. 26), points to a field-grass husbandry, and which appears to us to he the 
 best grounded, is defended by Hanesen in the " History of the Field 
 Systems of Germany," 1. c, p. 54, et seq. Vide Appendix. 
 
23 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 (arable land) is quoted frequently according to boun- 
 daries, and in particular instances, also, the area of 
 tbe conceded arable land, as well as that of the. mea- 
 dows, is laid down ; fot example, " Codex Dipl." 
 N. 1154 — "fionne ligcaS be norSam porte xxxvi. 
 aekera yrSlandes and x. aeceras maede." At the end 
 of the Anglo-Saxon period this separation was in all 
 cases quite general. In Domesday the "terra" for 
 so many ploughs, or so much plough land, was always 
 distinguished from pasture. 
 
 Naturally this neither excludes from our view that 
 in earliejf times there existed generally a wild field- 
 grass husbandry in the eastern and central parts of 
 England, nor that exceptionally such a condition here 
 and there was preserved for a length of time. It has 
 been remarked by several trustworthy observers, that 
 the common pasture and heaths in England in many 
 places showed very apparent traces of the plough; and 
 •sometimes former ridges even were plainly to be 
 distinguished (see Marshall,, especially "Midland 
 Department," p.- 17). These phenomena are not 
 difficult to account for, when we consider that in 
 former times a field-grass husbandry existed, in which 
 first one then another portion of the common pasture 
 was broken up by the plough, before the permanent 
 separation of the arable land from the pasture 
 came into vogue. In Germany it is well known that 
 a field-grass husbandry exceptionally occurs together 
 with a permanent state of the arable land in the 
 mountain regions, on distant poor lands, and indeed 
 sometimes on commons, in which a periodical change 
 of the years of arable use prevails. Two Anglo-Saxon 
 records appear to us to point to a like condition. The 
 question is of common land, of which a certain portion 
 is an appurtenance of the land which is private 
 property (see " Codex Diplo." 633), where three hides 
 and thirty jugera were ceded, one mill, and as 
 much mark land as belonged to three hides; "and 
 j^aes maerclandes swa micel swa to );rim' hidon 
 gebyraS;" also No. 1169, "and on |?angemanan lande 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 23 
 
 gebyraS |jarto fif and sixti aecera." It is very clear 
 that the question here is not one of common pasturage, 
 for in that case a particular area would have no mean- 
 ing. These two cases are easily to be understood, if 
 we consider that a certain portion of the common 
 pasturage was taken up and applied temporarily to 
 arable purposes. 
 
 With regard then to the distribution and use of 
 the land, we can obtain additional proof of the 
 occurrence of its intermixed state, and of a husbandry 
 regulated on the principle of a community, which was 
 before probable from the passage cited from the laws 
 of Ina. At a first view, it is truly remarkable that in 
 the greater part of the grants of -land which form 
 the subject of most of the title-deeds, the boundaries 
 of the conceded plots are given at the end of the 
 document, and appear as one connected superficies. 
 Waetz in his treatise on the old German hide ^ men- 
 tions that in the German title-deeds of the same 
 period, though the farm and farmyard were described 
 after that adjoining, the hide never was, and he sees 
 in this an indication of the intermixed condition in 
 which the component parts lay in the village acreage. 
 We may be tempted to form the inverse conclusion 
 from the accurate boundary description in nearly all 
 the Anglo-Saxon grants of land where the words 
 rounded off, occurs, that the hide was in one connected 
 piece. But above all, it must be taken into consider- 
 ation that most of the title-deeds contained Koyal 
 grants, not for particular hides in village communities, 
 but for extensive tracts. There are often grants for 
 30, 50, to 100 hides, and thus apparently large manors 
 which comprised either whole village communities or 
 which were entirely distinct from them. And in these 
 manors an agrarian community was again formed by 
 the tenants among themselves, and with the lord of 
 
 ' " Abhandlung der Kdn. Ges, d. Wissenschaften zu Gottiugen," 6 Baud, 
 1856, § 199 i. 
 
24 ON THE AGBIGULTUEAL COMMUNITY 
 
 the manor, as we see shadowed in the " rectitudines " 
 and some other records, but fully developed in the 
 period next following. Certainly in the less frequently 
 occurring smaller grants of land, as a rule, not the 
 boundaries of the conceded lands, but either none at 
 all, or those of the whole village acreage, in which the 
 ceded hides' were situated, were laid down. In the 
 first case where no boundaries at all were shown, in 
 some of the title-deeds, a reason was expressly given 
 that the missing boundary descriptions resulted from 
 the intermixed position in which the ceded acres lay. 
 In the " Chronicon Monast. de Abingdon," vol. i. 
 p. 384 (Kemble, " Cod. Diplom." N. 1278), Aetheh-ed 
 cedes five hides, " cujusdam loco sed communis terrae, 
 qui celebri aet Ceortatune nuncupatur nomine." The 
 record concludes, "rus namque preetextatum manifestis 
 undique terminis minus dividitur, quia jugera altrin- 
 secus copulata adjacent " (a.d. 982). In another case 
 the same conditions were laid down thus : "f>ises 
 landgemaera syn gemaene sua f>aet liS aefre aecer 
 under aecer." — Chron. Abingd. I. 330, "Cod. 
 Diplom." N. 1260 (a.d. 962). This is, expressed 
 still more plainly " Chron. Abingd." I. 304, Cod. 
 Diplom. N. 1234, "bat nigon hida licggead on gemang 
 oSran gedaUande feldlaes gemane, and meada gemane 
 and yrSland gemane " (a.d. 961) ; that is, partitioned 
 land, and yet in community — an expression which 
 would imply that it was private property, btit subject 
 to rights of a common husbandry. The other case, 
 however, without doubt is stiU the more frequent one, 
 in which the boundaries of the whole village acreage in 
 which the conceded hides lie are laid down on the 
 
 title-deed. It then runs thus : " Concedo mansas 
 
 in viUa ; " and at the end, "J)is synd pe landge- 
 maera aeS," &c. There is sufficient proof of this custom 
 in the fact that in different grants of land in the 
 same place the same boundary is laid down. Thus, 
 for example, the boundaries are essentially the same 
 in N. 427, and m 1198 of Cod. Diplom. The first 
 from King Eadred (a.d. 949) of 18 mans^ that he 
 grants fideh Wilfrico, in Welingforda ; the second. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 25 
 
 from King Eadrig (a.d. 956) of 22 mansae, that he gives 
 "cuidam ministro Eadrico." The houndary descrip- 
 tions in No. 291 and 292 are still naore strictly iden- 
 tical, as also in No. 300 and 302 ; but this last is not 
 undoubtedly genuine. Further, in " Chron. Abingd." 
 I. pp. 350 and 352, and also in 248 and 250. In the 
 last two instances the expression " aecer under aecer " 
 occurs, which the author of the Chronicle in an appended 
 glossary justly explains by "intermixed lying" (J^is 
 sind pa landgemaera to Draitune aecer under aecer). 
 But our view that the boundaries of the title-deeds 
 marked often the whole extent of the place, and not 
 the separate conceded plots of land, is shown in the 
 clearest manner by the title-deeds in the " Chron. 
 Abingd." I. p. 98, in "Cod. Diplom." N. 1134, in 
 which King Eadmund concedes to his servant Aelfsige 
 30 hides at Waltham. It follows the boundary de- 
 scription, which is prefaced by the words "j^is sind 
 jja landgemaero pe to WealSam hyrS j^ara j^ritiga 
 hida," and which, at the end of the boundary descrip- 
 tion, " |jonne heafS Eadmund cing gebocad Aelfsige 
 feowertyne hida binnan j^am firetigum hidum landge- 
 maero, ofer wudu, ofer feld, ofer ecen laese and to 
 ecan urfe, and xii maeS aeceras at f>aere standan 
 butan j^am landgemaerum." The king thus further 
 assigns 14 hides that lie inside the boundary of the 
 30 hides, and 12 acres of meadow in their position 
 outside these boundaries. 
 
 We have no means of determining either from laws 
 or from title-deeds the number of fields into which 
 such common acreages were separated, or the rotation 
 of their cultivation. One of the latter, however, 
 contains a notice by which we may arrive at a probable 
 conclusion that the acreage was divided into three 
 fields, and cultivated on the three-field husbandry 
 system, viz. " Codex Dipl." No. 1216, in the " Chron. 
 Abingd." I. p. 180. It there appears concerning a 
 grant of 20 hides which was given to the monastery by 
 King Eadwig : "j^is sindon pe landgemaero j^aesse 
 burlandes to Abbendune, j^aes is gadertang on freo 
 genamod, }paet is Hengestes ige and SeofocanwyrS 
 
26 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 and WihSam." Then follow the boundaries which 
 comprise only one entire piece of land. Possibly, the 
 question here may be one of different common acreages, 
 but this is very improbable ; they must have formed 
 one united whole. On this account we are justified ia 
 considering it as being three fields of one common 
 acreage. Further, it may tend to elucidate this 
 more clearly if we refer the description " 36 aekera 
 yrSlandes qui ter deni ter quoque bini arandi gratia 
 subjacent " (No. 1154), or the three years' lease of a 
 farm which is in our possession, to a three-field hus- 
 bandry, but it is no certain proof of it. Still less 
 can any such proof be found, as Leo supposes, in the 
 occasional occurrence of the word "zelga"; for field- 
 zelgse may occur as well with regard to another system 
 of husbandry with permanent arable land as in a 
 three-field husbandry. 
 
 In the community of land in Anglo- Saxon times the 
 meadows were held under different conditions. Very 
 frequently in the boxmdary descriptions the meadows 
 were described as belonging to the hides, but separated 
 from them ; for example, '* Codex Dipl." No. 132, 
 263, 284, 311, 361, 412, &c. &c. In relation to the 
 right of property and of use, it is once expressly men- 
 tioned that the meadow in question was a private 
 one : "And seo mead, J^e j^arto (that is, to five hides 
 at Eblesburnan) gebyreS wiS Hunningtun, pes is 
 fifta healf aecer, seo his sundermed" ("Cod. Dipl." 
 N. 1118); from which we may well conclude that 
 this was not always the case. In other places the 
 meadows occur as being in common, as No. 396 : 
 " And swa mead gemaene swa hio aer was (and there 
 common meadows where they formerly were) " ; and 
 No. 543, " ane mylne und her gebyriaS of faere 
 gemaenan meade XVI. aecyras (a miU and its pro- 
 perty in the common pasturage XVI. acres)." In 
 many cases also it was laid down that to the ceded 
 hides of such and such meadows, belonged so many 
 acres — ^fot example. No. 549. The common meadows 
 may easily have been the same as those which at a 
 later period were lot meadows, without separate pro- 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 27 
 
 perty in individual plots, with periodical allotment of 
 the portions; other meadows also there were, which 
 like the arable land were private property, but sub- 
 jected to a right of common use for pasturage after 
 the hay harvest; and perhaps the designation " special 
 meadow " indicated that such had been freed from a 
 community in use. 
 
 The third principal component part, the landmark 
 of an old community in land, the common pasturage, 
 is frequently alluded to in the authorities. The laws 
 of King Eadgar IV. c. 7, 8, speak of a common pas- 
 turage as an understood property of each "tunscips"; 
 thus, " he who rides out after cattle should give notice 
 to his neighbour wherefore he does so, and when he 
 returns home he must also notify who were the wit- 
 nesses that he bought cattle. If, however, not having 
 that object in view, he should make a journey and 
 conclude a purchase he must give notice on his return ; 
 and if the purchase should have been live cattle, he 
 must place them, with the sanction of the township, on 
 the common pasturage. Should he neglect to do this 
 for the space of five nights, the townspeople shall report 
 the circumstance to the Inspector of the Hundred,'' &c. 
 Not less do the old documents expressly testify to the 
 rights connected with grants of hides. Thus, " Codex 
 Diplom." 276 : " communionem marisci quae ad istam 
 villam antiquitus pertinebat ;" or, No. 395, " and seo 
 laes is to foran eallum mannum gemaene on p&m. 
 heaSfelda." Nos. 1163, 1357, and elsewhere, as also 
 in the " rectitudines," in which the neat-herd was 
 allowed to bring two oxen or more on to the common 
 pasturage with the lord's herd, with the knowledge of 
 his ealdorman. 
 
 Common forest also occurs very frequently in the 
 same manner as common pasture. Thus, in No. 179, 
 "adjectis denberisin commune silfa ;" No. 190, "ut 
 communem silbam secundum antiquam consuetudinem 
 cum ceteris hominibus abeat;" No. 241, "in commune 
 silfa, quam nos saxonice in ' gemenisse' dicimus ;" or. 
 No. 305, " in l^aem wudu, pe ^a ceorlas brucaS," Nos. 
 432, 843, 1142, 1281, &c. 
 
28 OX THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 It is impossible to ascertain from these sources what 
 the extent of the association was, which thus had 
 a co-partnership in the common pasture. When we 
 consider the internal grounds, which make it appear 
 quite natural that a village community in husbandry, 
 with a field constraint and permanent separation of 
 arable land and constant pasturage, and also a common 
 pasturage, existed, and also that these component parts 
 of a village community remained in later times, there 
 can scarcely be a doubt that such a condition was 
 prevalent on the lands of every Anglo-Saxon tunscips. 
 
 But as the internal evidence of a necessity for it was 
 not the same, it cannot be maintained with the same 
 certainty that there existed in England larger mark 
 associations comprising several townships. We possess 
 in our collection of records, only one which expressly 
 states that several villse and villatse had a share in the 
 common pasture, and the genuineness of this document 
 is not beyond all doubt. -^ 
 
 Also, if we advance a step beyond the Anglo-Saxon 
 times into the Domesday Book, which, in a certain 
 measure, marks the boundary line between this and 
 the next period in succession, we find very little more 
 concerning these pasture and forest associations. The 
 usual expression to represent the pasture there, is, 
 " pastura ad pecuniam villaB" ; more rarely it is called 
 " pasturse communes" ; in one place alone, if we admit 
 the trustworthiness of the Index, there occurs in Suffolk, 
 " qusedam pastura, communis omnibus hominibus de 
 Hundret," vol. ii. fol. 339". ' 
 
 But whatever may have been the extent of these 
 agrarian associations united for common pasture, this 
 much is certain— that besides the pasture and forests, 
 the property of these shareholders, there were other 
 uncultivated lands over which the king had a kind of 
 head seignory. In many title-deeds the kings grant 
 pasture, mast, and rights of forest on uncultivated lands, 
 
 ' Xo. 355. Item praedicta villa habere debet in eodem prato communem 
 pasturam, videlicit, quie "ymene morlese" appellatur, cum aliis villatis 
 scilicet, Somerforde, Pole et Kemele. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 29 
 
 and especially of woods, which were sometimes called 
 king's woods/and sometimes "common woods. "^ There 
 were also grants of rights of pasturage which were to 
 be exercised in common with the royal cattle,^ or which 
 were limited by the pasture rights of the king.* By the 
 researches of Allen, Kemble, and K. Maurer, it has been 
 shown that it was in the highest degree probable that 
 this uncultivated land, to which the king's right so 
 generally prevailed, was the " cyninges folcland." The 
 king had the power to grant this land, still retaining its 
 nature as " folcland," for the private use of individuals ; 
 and also to give grant-deeds, with the consent of the 
 Witena, by which it became bocland, or bookland. In 
 the first case, the property was of a precarious nature, 
 and was charged with many burdens ; in the second, 
 it became actual property, on which only the " trinoda 
 necessitas,"^ which was common to all landed property, 
 remained ; that is, the duty to service in the field, and 
 to repair bridges and strongholds (expeditio mili- 
 taris, pontis arcisve reconstructio). In details there 
 is also a great deal which is uncertain and obscure ; 
 but the question as to the nature of the people's land is 
 foreign to our purpose, because, although, as long as it 
 was not granted and cultivated, its use by the neigh- 
 bouring inhabitants for wood and pasture subject to 
 royal regulation was in existence, yet its relation to a 
 laud with an agrarian community and copartnership, 
 was a very distant one. After the Norman Conquest and 
 the introduction of the feudal system, all further mention 
 
 ' e.g. B. N. SOT, "and on king's booliholte fifvena gang.'' 
 
 ^ King Earduulf gives the Bishop " Hrofensis ecclesise,'' as a compensation 
 for a right of pasturage taken from it ; another, " XII. gregum porcorum ad 
 serbandam in pubUois locis." In many places it is uncertain whether the 
 kings granted hides with rights of pasturage only on the common lands 
 appertaining to them, or whether the pasturage rights went beyond this.' 
 
 ' e.g. N. 281, ii. " wenagang mid cyninges wenum — 111 oxnum gers mid 
 cyninges oxnum," and elsewhere. 
 
 * Concerning these royal rights of pasturage, which occur in aU parts of 
 England, see Kemble, Saxons I. p. 293. 
 
 ' Trinoda necessitas, i.e. the triple service, vis expeditio militaris, pontis 
 et arcis exstructio, to which aU Anglo-Saxon property in land was subject, 
 even the Eillodiatia bona were not exempt from these dues. — H. A. 0. 
 
30 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 of the people's land ceases ; the greater portion must 
 have been transmuted into bookland, which then, in 
 common with aU other land, reverted to the seignory of 
 the king as the supreme feudal lord. The rest of the 
 people's land appears to have been absorbed into the 
 terra regis, or royal domain. 
 
 With the advent of the Norman period the ground on 
 which we travel in pursuit of our research becomes 
 much more secure. The extensive survey of all landed 
 properties, which we possess in the Domesday Book, 
 affords much less information for our purpose than for 
 other agrarian relations ; but the other publications of 
 the Record Commission, which are very voluminous, 
 are much better suited for our purpose. Of these the 
 Land registers' demand the first consideration, which 
 are published as additamenta in four volumes of the 
 Domesday, viz. — the "Exon Domesday," "Inquisitio 
 Eliensis," "Winton Domesday," and the "Boldon 
 Book" ; the first, however, fails to be of use, as it 
 only comprises the western counties, which we have 
 already stated do not come within the scope of this 
 research. The Boldon Book, as entering very fuUy 
 into detail, is on that account the most instructive 
 among them aU for agrarian and agricultural history. 
 It is an agrarian relation concerning the county palatine 
 of Durham for the year 1183. These ground books 
 are, for the 11th and 12th centuries, what the Rotuh 
 Hundredorum of the time of Henry III. and Edward I. 
 are as sources for the agrarian history of the end of the 
 13th century ; but the latter is of by far the greatest 
 value. Especially the Hundred EoUs of the counties of 
 Bedford, Buckingham, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and 
 Oxford, set forth in the second volume of that publi- 
 cation, give us throughout a sharp and well-defined 
 picture, even in the minutest details, of the conditions 
 of the landed properties. Of the other publications of 
 the same commission, the " Placitorum Abbreviatio" 
 has been of value to us, which contains abbreviated 
 official reports of lawsuits which were carried on in 
 the reigns of King Eichard I., John, and Henry III., 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 31 
 
 Edward I. and II. To these sources are to be added 
 some of smaller land registers, which contain the 
 accounts of the landed possessions of spiritual corpora- 
 tions, and whicTi are published by the Camden Society, — 
 the " Liber Niger of the Abbey of Peterborough," in an 
 Appendix to the " Chronicon Peterburgense," nunc 
 primum typis mandatum, cura Th, Stapleton, Londini, 
 1849, comprising the years 1125-1128 ; the Domesday 
 Book of St. Paul's of the year MCCXXII, or " regiptrum 
 de visitatione maneriorum, per Kobertum Decanum," 
 edited, with an introduction and annotations, by William 
 Hale Hale (1858), and the " registrum sive liber irrotu- 
 larius et consuetudinarius Prioratus Beatse M^-rise 
 Wigorniensis," also edited in the year 1865, by "William 
 Hale Hale, with the addition of an introduction and 
 numerous annotations. The greater part of the 
 Domesday Book of St. Paul's is a description of the 
 property of St. Paul's Church in London, while the last 
 publication contains a precisely similar description 
 of the landed property of the Benedictine Monastery of 
 Worcester in the middle of the 13th century. But, 
 above all, we are indebted to the preface and annotations 
 of the learned editor of these rich and instructive 
 records ; they are, without any doubt, the best treatises 
 that we have met with on the mediaeval agrarian con- 
 dition of England. With the middle of the 13th 
 century commences that comprehensive work, the 
 " History of Agriculture and Prices in England," by 
 J. E. Thorold Rogers, from the year after the Oxford 
 Parliament (1259) to the commencement of the Con- 
 tinental War (1793), of which, up to the present time, 
 two volumes (cQmprising the years 1259-1400) have 
 appeared. The author has scarcely paid any attention 
 to the conditions which form the subject of our 
 present research. Community in land and agricultural- 
 husbandry systems are merely casually mentioned; 
 but his book is of a very high value for us from its 
 official accounts concerning other agricultural relations, 
 especially in giving the prices, which the author 
 extracted from the books of the Oxford Colleges, and 
 
32 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 put into a practical form. To these sources must 
 be added the great juridical authors, Bracton and 
 Fleta; the first on account of his comprehensive 
 and thorough specification of the whole of the pro- 
 Tincial law ; the second, on account of his description 
 of the interior economy of a manor, in doing which he 
 naturally enters largely into agricultural relations. By 
 means of these authorities we are enabled to obtain an 
 insight into the agrarian communities as they existed 
 in the first centuries after the Norman Conquest, and 
 the field systems by which their husbandry was con- 
 ducted. The following sketch will show the nature of 
 these conditions : — 
 
 In the whole of this period we find England covered 
 with a swarm of smaller or larger manors (maneria). 
 Already in the Anglo-Saxon period these must gra- 
 dually have overgrown the free peasant . proprietors. 
 The name " manor " alone, and not the thing itself, is 
 of Norman origin ; but without any doubt the Conquest, 
 and the strict application of the feudal system with 
 regard to all lands and soils, must have tended very 
 much to throw the rest of the small landed proprietors 
 under manorial lordships. The size of these maneria 
 differed in an extraordinary manner. We find in 
 Domesday Book a maneriolum that had only one 
 plough land, and also large farms of fifty or more 
 ploughs. They were thu.s in no wise unalterably fixed 
 as to size, as was the case later since the statute " quia 
 emptores." ^ We meet very frequently in Domesday 
 Book with partitions of some portions of land, and 
 additions to others. The interior arrangement of the 
 maneria was very similar to that of the German manors 
 (Frohnhofen) with regard to rights and husbandry 
 relations. On each of these manors was the ho.use 
 of the lord (curia manerii, capitale messagium, aula 
 domini), with a courtyard and garden, kc, comprising 
 
 ' Tlie statute "Quia emptores terrarum et tenementorum de feoilis 
 Magnatum," &c., 18 Edw. I. 1290, was against subinfeudation ; it ordered 
 that the feoffee should hold his land of the chief lord, and not of the 
 feoffor.— H. A. 0. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 33 
 
 several acres. The possessions of the manor-house 
 may then be reduced to two principal parts ; that is, 
 the terra dominica or demesne lands (Salgut), and the 
 terra hominum et tenentium. The manor land was 
 originally destined for the direct use of the lord, but 
 frequently parts of it were let off. Isti tenent de 
 dominico frequently occurs in the land registers, which 
 enumerate all the individual holders. The legal dif- 
 ference of these " tenentes de dominico" from the rest 
 of the tenentes requires a more accurate research 
 than we are able to afford ; but it appears to us that 
 it consists principally in that the demesne land could 
 be resumed at each season by the lord for his own 
 use, if there were no stipulation to the contrary in 
 the lease, notwithstanding its being let ; while the 
 terra tenentium, according to its intrinsic legal 
 nature, could not be united with the terra dominica. 
 The laws of William the Conqueror already point to 
 this state of tenure (I. cap. 29, 31), that it is unlawful 
 "removere colonos a terris, dummodo debita servitia 
 persolvent "; and again, " si domini terrarum non pro- 
 curent idoneos cultores ad terras suas colendas, jus- 
 ticiarii hoc faciant ;" while, on the other hand, Bracton 
 says of the dominicum villenagium, " item dicitur 
 dominicum villenagium quod quis tempestive et im- 
 pestive resumere possit pro voluntate sua et revocare." 
 The portions of the demesne land which were not let 
 off were almost always cultivated by the labour of the 
 tenants of the manor, and for this reason the terra 
 dominica formed the smallest part of the whole manor, 
 the larger portion being retained in the possession of 
 the tenants. In the Liber Niger of the Abbey of Peter- 
 borough, the survey of the property belonging to it 
 concludes : " Summa in dominicis maneriis abbatiae — 
 et ibi sunt in dominico LVII carucse. Et villani habent 
 CC Caracas et bovem." Besides villani, there were 
 also socmanni, bordarii, and cotsetae on these pro- 
 perties. The landed property of St. Paul's Church, in 
 London, consisted of about 24,000 acres, of which 
 three-eighths were in dominico and five-eighths terra 
 
34 ON THE AGEIGULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 tenentium.^ On the manors of the Benedictine 
 Monastery of Worcester, the terra dominica included 
 6,490 acres ; that of the yillani, 8,210 acres ; and the 
 libere tenentes possessed 2,280.^ These two classes of 
 tenants alone had thus about double as much land as 
 belonged to the demesne lands ; and, moreover, there 
 remained unreckoned the possessions of 85 socmanni, 
 of 123^ cotarii and cotmanni, and 106 forlandae f the 
 superficial extent of which is not given. 
 
 Although apparently it will ever be impossible to 
 explain clearly all the appellations which have been 
 appHed to the different kinds of tenants in different 
 places and at different times, stUl in Domesday Book, 
 and even more plainly in the later land registers (espe- 
 cially the Hundred Eolls) three principal classes are to 
 be distinguished. 
 
 First, the libere tenentes, to whom the socmanni, 
 though as a particular kind, belong. They are to be 
 found in the later land registers of this period on 
 nearly all properties, but in very unequal numbers, 
 and with landed property of a most varied extent, from 
 half an acre, or endowed with one toft, or one house 
 upwards. In Domesday Book, on the other hand, they 
 form a proportionately small part of the population. 
 According to Sir Henry EUis's reckoning, among the 
 
 ' Domesday of St. Paul's, Introduction, p. xiv. 
 
 " Eegistrum. Prioratus, Wigomiensis, Introduction, p. xvii 
 
 ' In some of the registers of land it appears as if the newly-cultivated 
 property had assumed a particular status, differing as well from the terra 
 tenentium as from the terra dominica. In Domesday of St. Paul's, 
 after dominicum, rillenagium, libere tenentes, cotarii were cited, it is 
 mentioned very particularly, " isti tenent de novis essartis," and certainly 
 these almost always paid a high rent, but were free from service. We have 
 not, however, been able to gain any further insight into this element from 
 our authorities, nor from any of the juridical writers. 
 
 Villani means the serfs who were glebae adscriptus. 
 
 Socmanni, those who owed the socagium, or the duty of ploughing, 
 grinding, &c., to the lord of the manor. 
 
 Bordarii, those who held small tenures, generally of inferior land under 
 the lord, which they could neither sell nor alienate without consent, and 
 who also owed certain services. — H. A. O. 
 
 Forlandse, fields of several acres lying together in rows ? H. A. 0. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 35 
 
 283,242 persons mentioned in Domesday Book, there 
 were 23,072 _ socliemanni, 18 sochemanni dimidii, and 
 12,384 liberi homines and dimidii- hberi homines. 
 According to the careful researches of Hale Hale, it is 
 not improbable that by no means all the liberi tenentes 
 are given in the Domesday, but merely those who paid 
 money alone for their possession ; the number of per- 
 sons is not mentioned, but the amount of their money 
 payment for each manerium under the expression valet 
 —s. — d. for each manor. Should this conjecture be 
 incorrect, certainly a very sudden and excessive increase 
 of the libere tenentes must have taken place in the 
 first centuries after the Conquest. In the monastery 
 spoken=of, in the year 1240, there were && liberi homi- 
 nes and 85 socmanni ; in Domesday, on the contrary, 
 in the same, only one solitary liber homo habens hidam 
 and two reddentes sextarias mellis were mentioned. 
 The same results are obtained when we compare the 
 Himdred EoUs with the Domesday. In the Yilla de 
 Coteham, in Cambridgeshire (which we have chosen as 
 an example for comparison, from a totally different 
 part of England), in the Hundred RoUs, besides the 
 possessors of manors, 26 libere tenentes are repre- 
 sented, while in Domesday there is not one. 
 
 Among these libere tenentes, at least in later times, 
 two kpids may be distinctly traced. One, which held 
 their possessions in consideration of money rent, or 
 often a "mere nominal tribute, such as a pair of gold 
 spurs, a pair of gloves, a rose, a pound of pepper — 
 these were the proper tenentes in libero socagio ; the 
 other those who rendered agricultural service towards 
 cultivating the manor property, either exclusively or 
 accompanied by a money payment. These last were 
 sometimes designated libere tenentes, but more fre- 
 quently socmanni, or liberi socmanni;^ their service, 
 
 ' Libere tenentes with, obligation to agricultural services are mentioned, 
 KC gr. in the Kotnli Hundred, vol. ii. pp. 629, 644, 645, 650, 656 ; liberi 
 socmanni with the same obligation, p. 484. 
 
 d2 
 
36 ON TEE AGBICULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 however, was never so oppressive as that of the class 
 whicl:^ next follows, and which was formed of the villani, 
 or peasant serfs, who were principally obKged to perform 
 the necessary agricultural labours, and occupied the 
 greater part of the lands of the manor. This class was 
 named, in Domesday Book — more than in the later 
 land registers — variously, according to localities. The 
 expression " villanus," which at first was most pre- 
 valent, had gradually yielded to local significations. 
 In the later Middle Ages the word villanus obtained a 
 stUl wider sense, and equally implied a state of ser- 
 vility. Juridical writers distinguished then, between 
 villeins regardant and viUeins in gross ; the first are 
 those who are tied to the hides and saleable with them, 
 — serfs, with obligation to afford agricultural services ; 
 the second, actual slaves, without any possessions in 
 land, and saleable by deed. But the first signification 
 of villanus is no doubt the original one, as the derivation 
 of the word, from villa, shows. In Domesday they are 
 exclusively called villani, the slaves being designated 
 " servi." 
 
 The size of the possessions of these villani did not 
 materially differ from those of the libere tenentes. As a 
 rule rather, in the village descriptions (or inventories) 
 it was clearly to be seen that originally the size of 
 the peasant properties was perfectly fixed and equal 
 on the same manerium ; while the individual holdings 
 of the libere tenentes, also on the same manor, for the 
 most part differed so much in size that no conclusion 
 can be formed as to their original equaHty. On this 
 account we often meet with the distinction between 
 pleni villani and semi or dimidii viUani, full and half 
 peasants ; but very seldom (and not at all in the later 
 land registers) the mention of pleni and dimidii soc- 
 manni. The original size of a possession of a full 
 peasant appears to have been the virgata terrse ; but 
 then again the size of this was not the same in different 
 manors. We find virgatse of from sixteen to forty- 
 eight acres, and the greatest difference in the size of 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 37 
 
 the virgata ^ occurs on manors immediately bordering 
 on each other ; while on the same manerium, of 
 all the virgatae, each comprised a like quantity of 
 arable land. In the north of England the parti- 
 tion of the land according to bovatse or oxlands pre- 
 vailed — eight oxen being reckoned to each carucata 
 (ploughland). _ Thus, in Boldon Book, the villani in 
 Boldon and in several other villages have each two 
 bovatas of thirty acres. Now and then are found in 
 middle and southern England bovatae which are equal 
 to half a virgata; for example, in Liber Niger of 
 Peterborough Abbey. 
 
 T*his is not the place to enter more fully into the 
 legal and agricultural state of this most important ele- 
 ment of the English population of the Middle Ages, 
 but there can be no doubt that in the first centuries of 
 the Norman Conquest they were in a state of the most 
 oppressive serfdom. Objections, however, may be 
 raised to this generalization. Bracton expressly dis- 
 tinguishes two kinds of villenagium, viz. a villenagium 
 purum and a villenagium socagium. A peasant standing 
 in the first category, according to his account, could be 
 subjected to unlimited service and burdens by his lord. 
 
 ' In Hundred Rolls, vol. ii. p. 629, the size of tlie hide and virgata on 
 three manors which bordered on each other is given. On the first it com- 
 prised six virgatse of twenty-eight acres ; on the second, six of forty acres ; 
 and on the third, four of forty-eight acres. See also introduction to 
 Domesday of St. Paul's, p. liui. Casually we may here notice the attempt 
 of Kemble to ascertain and fix the original superficial extent of the Anglo- 
 Saxon hide, in the results of which many learned Germans have concurred. 
 His conclusion that the hide was a land measure containing thirty-three 
 English acres, is, however, wanting in all internal probability. With aU 
 races of people the hide contained a greater or less superficial extent, accord- 
 ing to the condition of the land which formed its component parts, and 
 it is in the nature of things that it should have been so ; a designation, 
 such as Mda, which is apparently connected with Mw, family, and which 
 Beda (Eccl. Hist.) translates familia, must have been a land measure which 
 had an equal value for the support of a family, or for agricultural purposes. 
 (Ploughland, aratrum, as Mda is frequently translated in the records, Codex 
 Diplom. Anglo-Sax.) In the state of civilization such as existed in the 
 Anglo-Saxon times, the hide cannot certainly be reckoned according to its 
 superficial contents. Kemble can only ground his position on very artificial 
 inteipretations, and by the assumption of there being two kinds of acres 
 which were then in vogue, of a very different superficial extent. 
 
38 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 (nec scire debeat sero, quid facere debeat m crastino — 
 talliari autem potest ad plus vel miuus). They had not 
 the smallest right to the hides which they cultivated, 
 but were, according to his description, at the disposition 
 of their lord's pleasure — in short, serfs in the strongest 
 sense of the word.^ The villani socmanni, on the con- 
 trary, had to afford fixed services and dues, and could 
 not be removed from their hides against their will ; but 
 on their side they could, at any time, leave their 
 tenementa. This class had no right to sell their pos- 
 sessions ; the only way they could ahenate them was 
 in the form of a restitution to the lord of the manor, 
 or to his ballivus, who then might let it afresh to the 
 person in whose favour the former possessor relin- 
 quished the property. But that the great mass of the 
 viUani of the period stood in the first category is suf- 
 ficiently proved by the circumstance to which we have 
 alluded above, that the expression viUanus occurs 
 as a technical appellation, as well of the state of per- 
 sonal serfdom, as of the agricultural class of peasants 
 who had obHgatory service to perform. Hence it is 
 very evident that, in popular estimation, peasants with 
 obligatory service and serfs were looked upon in nearly 
 the same hght.^ Further, nearly always where, in the 
 sources of this period, the dues of the villani are given 
 in detail, these are also specified, which Bracton con- 
 siders as a sign of personal serfdom, as such could 
 
 ' However, according to Bracton, such a tenementum in villenagio conld 
 pass into the hands of a freeman, who then had to discharge all services and 
 dues the same as avillanus, " sed nomine villenagii,et non nomine personse;" 
 hut he was freed from those dues which were merely consequent on per- 
 sonal servitude. See also Placit. Ahhrev. 29 Edw. III. Ebor. Rot. 30, p. 
 243, tenura in villenagio non facit libermn hominem villanum. 
 
 ^ On account of the double signification of the word in the Hundred 
 Rolls, the compilers of the official reports consider it necessary to add to 
 the enumeration of the villani, villani sunt servi, or nativi, e.g. II. pp. 324, 
 325, 329, 1. c. ; while, on the other hand, at the same period, in the decisions 
 of the Curia Regis, the expression vUlanus is used to designate the state of 
 personal serfdom, eg. Placitor. Abbrev. p. 25, et dicunt quod viUanus est, 
 quia ipse debet arare et metere et auxUium dare per consuetudinem et quod 
 non potest sine licentia flliam suam maritare ; or, p. 286, villanus fugiens 
 extra terram domini sui non debet capi sine processu. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 39 
 
 not be demanded from free men, even though they were 
 in possession of a villanum tenementum. In these 
 specifications it was almost always expressly mentioned 
 that the villani could not give their daughters in mar- 
 riage without the consent of the lord of the manor, 
 and that for this consent a tax was exacted (merchetum, 
 gersummatio prolis), which Bracton points out ex- 
 pressly as a token of personal serfdom.^ Sometimes, 
 and especially towards the end of this period, the 
 peasants from whom obligatory service was due are 
 quoted as custumarii, or consuetudinarii — for example, 
 in the statute de extentis manerii, as well as in the 
 articuli visitationis maneriorum S. Pauli,* in the 
 "Hundred EoUs," II. 403, 507, and I.e., which, in 
 all essential points, agrees with this statute, but goes 
 more into detail. We might be tempted to perceive in 
 these, the villani socmanni of Bracton, but the charac- 
 teristic personal dues of the serfs were also required 
 from the custumarii, as reported in " Hundred EoUs," 
 II. 507, and elsewhere. According to the articuli 
 visitationis it was the custom to inquire of every 
 custumarius quid et quantum dabit — pro filia sua 
 maritanda ; and, consuetudinarius occurs as precisely 
 synonymous with villanus in the "Placit. Abbrev." p. 
 161, "homines cognoverunt se esse villanos et consue- 
 tudinarios predieti A. operando quidquid ipse precepit 
 et dando merchetum pro filiabus suis maritandis." It 
 is, therefore, inadmissible to make any difference 
 bet'vveen custumarii, or consuetudinarii and villani with 
 regard to their legal status; it appears to us rather 
 to be in the highest degree probable, that in the 
 villani socmanni of Bracton we may recognize the 
 above-mentioned inferior, kind of libere tenentes, 
 the not very numerous agricultural socmanni serfs. 
 
 ' In the same sense as this token of personal servitude is quoted here, it 
 is found in the Placit. Abbrev. 1. c, and in the Hundred Rolls, II. 337, in 
 villenagio sunt V. virgse et tenentes sunt nativi, quod non possunt maritare 
 filias sine licentia domini. 
 
 = Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 153, et seq. 
 
40 ON THE AGBICULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 But if, according to law, the villani were in a state 
 of the strictest serfdom, still by custom the amount of 
 their sendees had already become accurately defined. 
 We find everywhere in the land registers exact specifi- 
 cations of the nature of their services ; and even where 
 in relation to payment of rent the passage occurs, 
 "taliantur ad voluntatem domini " the agricultural 
 burdens, both in kind and extent, are accurately deter- 
 mined. It is very certain that the position of this class 
 must have been very oppressive, even with regard to 
 fixed services. Generally a man of each virgata worked 
 three to four days from the 1st August to Michael- 
 mas, and the rest of the year two to three days per 
 week. Besides this, the peasants ploughed sometimes 
 one day weekly (except during frost and harvest time), 
 sometimes a definite extent of one acre for the sowing 
 of winter or summer grain, and also, as a rule, for 
 the fallow ; they harrowed and sowed the ploughed 
 land sometimes de proprio semine. They rendered 
 further extraordinary service in the hay and corn 
 harvests, being obUged to turn out on to the farm two 
 or three times a year with their whole households — 
 the housewife usually beiag alone excepted (excepta 
 husewifa) ad magnas precarias. ^ Add to this the 
 occasional carriage of wood from the forest, com to 
 market, mUlstones to the town, as well as messenger 
 service, &c. &c., as indeed we frequently find was the 
 case with the peasants belonging to the Germans. 
 Besides these services, they were liable to numerous 
 natural dues and money taxes, and laudemia (heriots, 
 dat in obitu melius catallum),^ which appear under 
 
 ' "Ad magnas precarias." This barbarous expression means that the 
 peasant was obliged to mow and reap for his master whenever he was 
 "prayed so to do." The word precaria is explained — servitimn quod 
 praestare tenentur tenentes ceu metendis messibus, faloandis fenis, et aUis 
 aervitiia, quando ad id rogati simt. This is identical with the tyrannical 
 corv6e wmch formerly existed in France. — H. A. O. 
 
 " This actually exists at the present time in England ; when a copyholder 
 dies, the lord of the manor (in some cases) has the right to demand a heriot — 
 the best horse or other animal, and, should these be wanting, the best 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 41 
 
 different names, the signification of which, is often a 
 veritable stumbling-block to the antiquary and linguist. 
 But in all these cases the amount of the service and 
 dues was in proportion to the size of the tenementa, so 
 that two dimidii villani (of whom each had only half 
 a virgata) were not bound to furnish more service than 
 one plenus villanus on the same manor who was 
 possessed of a whole virgata. , 
 
 The third class of dwellers on the manor, who 
 are always mentioned in the last place in the land 
 registers, are the cotarii, cotsetlse, bordarii,^ which 
 names imply possessor of a small house (in low 
 German kotten, katen, kate), with a courtyard 
 attached to it, and sometimes a small plot of ground. 
 Especially in the second part of the Hundred Rolls 
 their small holdings are very exactly given. Their 
 homestead was sometimes called messagium, some- 
 times cotagium or toft ; and generally they had a 
 courtyard, curtillum, or a small inclosed or fenced 
 piece of ground, in or near the village, called croft, ^ 
 from a few rods to several acres in size ; and not 
 seldom also, some acres of land in the open fields (in 
 campis). Their land property was sometimes desig- 
 nated cotland.^ This class also had to pay obli- 
 
 chattel. The origin of tliia custom is shown by the signification of the 
 word — here, an army ; and gitau, to give : heregaete — heriot, i.e. a war 
 due : formerly a horse and armour. A curious instance of the continuance 
 of a custom when the necessity for which it was instituted had long ceased. 
 — H. A. 0. 
 
 ' That the most frequently occurring bordarii in Domesday are the same 
 class with the later cotarii, as they are almost without exception called, is 
 clearly proved from a passage ia the Liber Niger (p. 163) of the Abbey of 
 Peterborough, where first the cotsetes are mentioned, and those further on 
 are designated bordarii. Bord, or bordeUum, is properly a small house or 
 hut. In the same Liber Niger a bercharius is mentioned at Estona, qui 
 tenet bordellum (who has a cottage). 
 
 ' The small inclosed plots, which were called crofts, were as a rule in 
 the immediate vicinity of the dwelling ; sometimes it happens that one 
 dwelling had two crofts, scil. juxta boscum, et juxta domum suam, " Eeg. 
 Wig." 43 b. ; but it was commonly expressly distinguished from the open 
 field, e.g. " Eot. Hund." II. 661, tenet unum messagium cum crofto quod 
 tenet demidiam acram, et praeterea tres acras in campis. 
 
 " Only exceptionally we find properties of cotlands of a somewhat larger 
 extent, e.g. " Eot. Hund." II. p. 631— a cotland of 24 acres. 
 
42 ON TEE AGRIGVLTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 gatory service, but, on account of the insignificance 
 of their possessions, of a much lighter character than 
 that of the villani. Above all, team service naturally 
 did not fall to the share of these cottagers ; except at 
 harvest time they gave at most one day per week 
 hand work ; sometimes they assisted in mowing hay 
 and at wheat harvest, as also at sheep-shearing, and 
 on other extraordinary occasions on the farm. With 
 regard to their being free to leave the estate, or to 
 give their daughters in marriage, they laboured under 
 the same restrictions as the villani ; ^ and if such 
 emblems of serfdom were not so regularly laid down 
 as for the villani, we presume the reason to have been, 
 that this was considered as a matter of course, with 
 these, the lowest class of tenants. These services were 
 however expressly laid down for the cotarii, e.g. 
 " Rot. Hund." II. pp. 654, 661, 662, 663, 664, and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 The monendayesmen, in Huntingdonshire, appear 
 to have been a peculiar kind of cotarii, of whom 
 some were in possession of a monendayesmen croft, 
 others unam quart, terrae, and who were obliged 
 to cultivate their land with the manorial plough. 
 To the same class belong the tenentes pretencarii 
 in the same county, and many other merely 
 locally occurring designations which we can as little 
 individually discuss as the names of. the preceding 
 class. 
 
 Manors constituted and populated after this manner 
 formed each for itself an agricultural unity, which 
 sometimes, but by no means always, coincided with 
 the viUata (the township). 
 
 In the first place the peasant serfs of every manor 
 were associated in a perfectly intimate fellowship among 
 
 ' On this acooimt also, in some places, persons -wlio had only one croft 
 were designated villani, while according to the conditions of their property 
 they were cotarii This is explained by the double use of the above- 
 mentioned vUlanus for serf, and for possessors of peasant holdings to which 
 service dues were attached. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 43 
 
 themselves _; their plots were so small that they were 
 never sufficient for separate, independent management. 
 By far the most important agricultural labour of that 
 period was ploughing, and a peasant very rarely under- 
 took this, for himself alone, with his own team and 
 plough. The team of a plough consisted then, as a rule, 
 of not less than eight draught cattle ; a^nd such teams 
 were in use even at the end of the preceding century. 
 Arthur Young writes, of a place in Sussex, that eight 
 oxen and one horse were there yoked to one plough ; 
 of another place, that they ploughed with eight oxen ; 
 and in some parts of England as many as a dozen oxen 
 were, used with one plough, so that two or three drivers 
 were necessary.^ He remarks on the exceedingly bad 
 fodder, which very much diminished the labour-power 
 of the draught cattle, especially during the winter 
 ploughing. Many landlords ploughed during the 
 whole winter on straw-feeding alone, which must have 
 been very general on account of the scanty supply of 
 fodder in mediaeval husbandry. The same customs are 
 reported to have prevailed in Scotland. Commonly 
 there, even in the middle of the preceding century, 
 they ploughed with a team of four oxen and two horses, 
 and in many districts with eight, ten, or twelve oxen.^ 
 That this custom was very ancient, follows from the pre- 
 viously mentioned old divisions of the plowlands (caru- 
 cata) in eight bovatas (ox-gangs), and the sources of our 
 period also give express evidences of it. The Liber 
 Niger of Peterborough Abbey always gives the number 
 of draught cattle and ploughs that are on the manor 
 farm, and we see throughout that from six to eight 
 oxen are reckoned for one team. In the Domesday 
 of St. Paul's^ are not less frequently mentioned, carucas 
 octo or decern capitum ; but there, indeed, for the most 
 
 ' A Fanner's Tour through the East of England. London, 1771, pp. 122, 
 130. 
 
 " Edinburgh Review, vol. 24 (Nov. 1814), p. 90. 
 
 ' In the Introduction to the Domesday of St. Paul's, numerous instances 
 are found which relate to the making up of the team. 
 
44 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 part the teams are mixed, so that each team consists of 
 six oxen and four horses ; or four oxen and four horses. 
 As so many cattle could not be kept on every small 
 peasant's holding, the possessors yoked their draught 
 cattle together in a common team, either when they 
 rendered manorial service or cultivated their own arable 
 land. And thus, in the Hundred EoUs, when the 
 plough labour of a villanus is reckoned, the addition is 
 often made, sicut sociatur, e.g. Hundred EoUs H. 
 600, 601, 603 ; "arabit unam seylionem sicut sociatur''; 
 or, still clearer, II. 631, "arabit — si propriam habet 
 carucam, si non, cum alio vel aliis sicut sociatur" ; or, 
 II. 645, " duo viUani tenent inter se unam carucam, 
 arabunt cum caruca sua imam seylionem." This mutual 
 participation in furnishing draught cattle for the yoke 
 appears to have extended to the libere tenentes, thus at 
 ii. 485, of the 16 liberi socmen at Swapham in Cam- 
 bridgeshire — et duo invenient unam carectam ad 
 bladum trahendum — item si duo vel tres vel quatuor 
 unam carucam conjunxerint semel ad semen hiemale et 
 semel ad semen quadragesimale Priorem adjuvabunt ad 
 arandum — Et si quis eorum sedecim unum equum 
 habuit et non conjunxit per illos dies ad trahendum 
 &c. ; or in Domesday of St. Paul's, page 86, omnes 
 tenentes ejusdem viUatse debent quater venire p. annum 
 ad pastum Domini ad precarias carucarum, illi soil, qui 
 Caracas habent per se vel junctas cum aliis. Thus are 
 to be explained many statements in Domesday, in 
 which the carucae hominum are given, and in which a 
 plough-team was always given to several viUani and 
 socmanni. But as in Domesday carucata (the plough 
 land) and caruca (the plough) are designated by the 
 same abbreviation, we can seldom know for certain 
 whether the question is of the extent of the arable 
 land, or of the number of ploughs actually forthcoming. 
 The land register of the Abbey of Peterborough is 
 clearer, as the amount of the arable land of the peasant 
 proprietors, as well as the number of their plough- 
 teams, are laid down. In a village, Kateringes e.g. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 45 
 
 there are 40 villani, each has a virgata^ terras, and 
 among them 22 carucas ; further, in Pilesgete, 8 villani 
 who possess together 1 hida and 1 virgata and 2 
 carucas ; 44 sochemanni who have 8 carucas ; in 
 Alwaltona, 7 pleni villani and 12 dimidii villani, who 
 possess 18 virgas terrse and 7 carucas, &c. Harrowing, 
 also, appears sometimes to have been executed in 
 common, although the draught requisite for a harrow 
 could scarcely have been beyond the means even of a 
 small peasant. We hear, e.g. of three libere tenentes 
 (de conquestu), each of 16 acres, that they — herciabunt 
 conjunctim cum una hercia tempore quadragesimali, 
 dum dictus Abbas seminabit avenam, &c.* It is not 
 very apparent to whom each time the property in these 
 common teams and agricultural implements really 
 belonged; but it appears very probable that they belonged 
 to all in common; yet we learn of a boat in common to 
 the village (commune batillum de Neuton), with which 
 cotarii were obliged to make certain expeditions for the 
 lord (Eot. Hund. II. 647). In the same manner as with 
 ploughwork, there were other services which the tenant 
 serfs had to perform on the manorial farms and lands, very 
 often not for each tenementum, but determined for all 
 in common ; e.g. Eeg. Prior, Wig. 65, where it says, 
 speaking of the collective peasantry, "invenient de 
 communi vi. homines ad falcandum pratum ;" and the 
 compensations that came to them were often not less 
 in common (in communi habent), especially in mowing 
 hay and in harvest. It is mentioned several times, 
 that the serfs alternately (year by year) shall serve, the 
 
 ' Tte virgata was a small piece of land of indefinite size, tlie plot of the 
 peasant — 
 
 " A time there was ere England's woes began, 
 When every rood of ground maintained its man." 
 
 H. A. 0. 
 
 ' Rogers (History of Agriculture and Prices) could find no trace of 
 harrowing in the 13th and 14th centuries, since he translates "hercia" by 
 hoe ; he doubts whether harrowing was then known. There can, however, 
 be no doubt that " hercia, herciare," which is plainly mentioned as among 
 agricultural services, is properly translated by Du Cange, and others, 
 by "to harrow with a harrow." How can, e.g. herciat per unum diem cum 
 uno equo ad semen hiemale (Kotul. Hund. II. 461) be understood in the 
 sense of " hoeing the land " ? 
 
46 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 first haK of the peasants one year, the other half the 
 next — (Eot. Hund. II. 470, 476). But this arrangement 
 could scarcely have been possible, if each time the 
 peasants who were free from manorial service had not 
 assisted the others in the cultivation of their properties. 
 
 The general enterprise and ability of the viUani, in 
 spite of the unfavourable conditions in which they were 
 placed, reached such a point that, in isolated cases, 
 they farmed the whole of the terra dominica, with all 
 its appurtenances, on the manor on which they dwelt. 
 Among the possessions of the Monastery of Worcester, 
 this was found to be the case on two manors ; while in 
 others the villani only farmed part of the manor land.^ 
 Such a contract with peasant serfs has elsewhere its 
 analogy, e.g. in Mecklenburg, where at an earlier period 
 the peasant serfs even bought several bankrupt manors. 
 
 Besides the more intimate association of the pea- 
 sants with regard to agricultural relations on these 
 manors, there was also an intermixed state of the 
 fields, and an obhgation to cultivate the arable land 
 and meadows by a regulated succession of crops, with a 
 right to free common pasturage on the uncultivated 
 parts of the property. There is no want of authentic 
 documents to vouch for such a state of village husbandry 
 in different parts of the country ; but also the attempts 
 of the large landed proprietors, and above aU possessors 
 of manors, were very apparent, to withdraw their land 
 from this agrarian community. Exactly when these 
 attempts were made, we possess authentic information 
 of the ruling custom, which otherwise would be pre- 
 sumed as a matter of course. Thus, e.g. Galfridus 
 
 ' Eegistr. Prior. Wigom, p. 47=' , " curia cumpertinentiis et du£e carucate 
 terrse de dom. cum pratis et proventibus, et heriotibus et villanagio tradite 
 
 sunt villanis ad firmam." p. 54'' , " hsee villa tradita ab antique villanis 
 
 ad firmam ad placitum cum. omnibus ad nos pertinentibus excepta advoca- 
 tione ecclesise et solvunt inde — prseterea percipimus medietatem proventuum 
 et herietum, praeterea debent metere, ligare et comportare totum bladum de 
 antiq. dom. de H." From this farming of old manors must be distinguished 
 the frequent cases in which the peasant village alone was let at a fixed rent 
 instead of any service dues. In these leases, also, sometimes it was laid 
 down, hsBc Tilla tradita est villanis ad firmam. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 47 
 
 Bolle, of DuUingham, complains concerning depastio 
 of his land by the greater part of the inhabitants of 
 DuUingham; they, however, " clamant habere commu- 
 niam ibidem per totum annum quolibet tertio anno et 
 quolibet anno a festo S. Petri ad Vincla (1 Aug.) usque 
 ad festum Purificationis S. Mariae (2 Febr.) ; while the 
 complainant seeks to dispossess them of the common 
 pasturage every year, from Mary's purification to Mary's 
 birth, i.e. from the 2nd Feb.,,o.s., to the 6th Sept., o.s., 
 because he wished to cultivate the fallow. (Plac. c. 
 Eegis ap. Westm. 2 Ed. II. Cantabr. Eot. 77 in the 
 Placit. Abbrev. p. 306.) A similar case occurs of an 
 endeavour to withdraw a glebe land from the common 
 pasturage in the fallow year (32 Edw. I. Nott. rot. 74 in 
 the Placit. Abbrev. p. 251), in which the parson brings 
 his complaint against thirty persons of a village on 
 account of depastura bladi sui; and they make 
 reply that on the land in question, " quod sunt 
 tenentes domini ejusdem villae et quod debent ibi 
 communicare quolibet tertio anno." It is a peculiar 
 pleading, that of the inhabitants of a village who have 
 been complained of for depastura bladi, that they, on 
 the land in question, " debent communicare quolibet 
 secundo anno a festo Nativitatis S. Johannis B. (24 
 June) usque ad festum Annunc." (26 March). We 
 might be tempted to consider this as pointing to a 
 two-field husbandry; but the required pasture time does 
 not tally, either with the fallow year (for there would 
 be no space for cultivating the winter corn), or with the 
 wheat year, for the harvest, on the 24th June, could 
 not be gathered by that time. Perhaps before, the land 
 had only been used as grassland. In many cases the 
 lords of the manor succeeded openly in withdrawing 
 the manor property, either wholly or in part, from the 
 community. Among the estates of the Priory at 
 Worcester there were several which came into this 
 category, as the following remarks show — e.g. p. 12% 
 " persona et liberi de Estum habent communia in 
 stipula (stubble) — de novo essarto tantum, remiserunt 
 autem nobis in perpetuum communiam de vetere 
 
48 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 assarto." In another manerium, particular plots only 
 were withdrawn from the common pasturage ; " nullus 
 habet communam in pastura de Kingestun, nee in 
 prato deHultun, nee in giardino" (p. 38'). And again, 
 in another, the whole of the demesne lands were freed 
 from common rights ; " nullus habet eommuniam nobis- 
 cum in antiquo dominico, nee in bosco" (p. 53*), and 
 even there, somewhat later : " habemus quandam terram 
 juxta brueram et nullus in ea communicat." There are 
 some passages which may be interpreted as pointing to 
 a withdrawal from the community in lands, as in the 
 Kotuli Hund. II. 529 : " Abbas tenet — in boseis, pratis, 
 pasturis et terra arabili XI^ aer, in uno clauso ;" and 
 stiU more clearly, II. 67 : " tenet tres carucatas terras in 
 dominico et unum boseum de una leuea in cireuitu et 
 hoe totum habet in separali per totum annum." Also 
 the expression in Reg. Wig. 87", " triginta acrse quolibet 
 anno seminandaB," relates plainly to arable land that was 
 not subject to the constraint (or custom) of a succes- 
 sion of crops, or to fallow pasturage. Certainly, 
 however, in the greater number of cases, the state of 
 community in use of the arable land, even for the great 
 free landowners, must have continued; even different 
 manors remained together in the same community, if 
 they were situated in the same villata ; e.g. I.e. p. 34'' : 
 "eommuna pastura cum Kekingwik-et ipsi nobiscum 
 in wareto et stipula et pratis." A similar community 
 in pasturage, in two separate manors is reported, p. 
 10* . Fresh confirmations of this community also 
 occur, e.g. in an agreement (or contract), in which 
 a certain Eicardus le Joyce de Shennington trans- 
 fers to one Johannes le Soe houses and plots of land, 
 and the said Johannes secures to Eicardus " eom- 
 muniam pasturse per omnes terras suas in Shenning- 
 ton tempore aperto, et post fena et blada coUecta 
 exceptis le Inlaund, le Banecrofte, et terra de Stenelowe 
 infra novas fossatas." (Placit. Abbrev. p. 232.) 
 
 At this period also, the meadows appear to have been 
 in a different position as to field constraint and 
 common pasturage, and therefore this position, far 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 49 
 
 more frequently than for arable land, is expressly laid 
 down m the ground books (land registers). The 
 ordinary rule was that the meadows should be for 
 separate use from the beginning of the growth of the 
 grass to the end of the hay harvest ; however, these 
 limits were not always fixed in the same manner. We 
 find that prata pasture culturse were in separate use 
 (separabiha), a Purific. S. Mariae (2 Feb.) usque ad 
 fest. Johannes B. (24th June), Eotul. Hund. II. 618 ; 
 or, a Pascha usque ad fest. S. Johannis B. (1. c. ii. 
 610) ; or, a festo Purific. S. Mariae usque ad Gulam 
 Augusti (Aug. 1), 1. c. ii. '626. An exceptionally short 
 period of common pasturage is cited in Rot. Hund. II. 
 p. 616— pratum separabile, quod vocatur Eedmad 
 exceptis a festo S. Michaelis usque ad festum S. Mar- 
 tini_ (llth Nov.). Sometimes the meadows were 
 subjected for the whole year to common pasturage, in 
 which the adjoining land lay fallow. We have cog- 
 nisance of an agreement in which a meadow is given 
 back, thus : " quando campus villas contiguus pr^dicto 
 prato excoletur, pratum illud falcabitur et quando 
 campus ille remanebit warectatus, praedictum pratum 
 erit commune" (Placit. Abbrev. p. 81). Thus, it is to 
 be understood that when a meadow from its nature 
 is not put to fallow, it shall lie " ad warectum quolibet 
 tertio anno" (Eot. Hund. II. 610) ; and perhaps, also, 
 when the meadows of the common pasturage lie open, 
 tempore aperto.^ These customs also, which are suf- 
 ficiently explained by the desire not to exhaust the mea- 
 dows by constant hay crops, had been exceptionally pre- 
 served to later times on a manor described by Williams 
 in the Archaeologia. The above-mentioned lot meadows 
 were mown for two years on that manor, and then 
 used the third year as common pasturage (1. c. 275). 
 An arrangement of this kind could naturally have held 
 good with regard to the meadows, of which the par- 
 ticular plots were strictly private, as to those where they 
 were constantly allotted for hay harvest. 
 
 ' e.g. Eot. Hund. II. 484. Teniplarii tenent umim pratum separabile et 
 incluseruBt cum fossis et sepibua et fuit commune tempore aperto. 
 
 E 
 
50 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 We have not been able to find anything further 
 relating to this custom and its extension during this 
 period; however, it may easily be surmised that the 
 meadows which were designated as simple prata com- 
 munia, were lot meadows of the above kind. Thus, 
 there are in Huntingdonshire two meadows lying in a 
 mariscus communis, quge prata spectant ad omnes 
 homines de Stangrund et Faresteved (Eot. Hund. II. 
 646) ; also in a village in the county of Cambridge, the 
 peasants were obliged to mow pratum domini in com- 
 muni prato (1. c. 485), &c. Of a more doubtful nature 
 are the numerous complaints in the same county, that 
 this or that person " tenet unum pratum separabile et 
 fuit commune" ; or, that one, " cepit de communi 
 quoddam pratum ad quantitatem iii acrarum . ad 
 nocumentum totius villse " (1. c. p. 484) ; because here 
 possibly the question is of separate meadows, that were 
 formed, not from the common meadows, but out of the 
 common pasture land. 
 
 A general and permanent separation from the com- 
 munity in land at that period existed only for dwellings, 
 farmyards, and gardens, for the park of the manor, 
 which was a frequently occurring feature, and for the 
 small inclosures above mentioned, which were com- 
 monly designated by the word " croft." 
 
 But if we admit that the ruling system of this time, 
 for arable land and meadows, was one of constraint in 
 cultivation with a community in fallow and stubble 
 pasturage, we may conclude, with a moderate degree of 
 certainty, that there was an intermixed state of the 
 fields. The field constraint would have led to an 
 intolerable state of things if each holding, at least, had 
 not had a share in each of the different cultivated 
 portions of the village acreage ; and if any one could 
 have been subjected to have the whole of his arable land 
 thrown into the fallow and common pasturage in one 
 year. But we have authentic proofs enough of the 
 intermixed state, not only of the tenant land, but also 
 the demesne, which, at least in many cases, was mixed 
 up with that of the tenant. Thus, e.g. William Hale 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 51 
 
 Hale imparts- to us, in the notes to the ArticuK visita- 
 tionis maneriorum S. Pauh, the description of the 
 terra dominica of a manor in Nastock (Essex) in the 
 year 1291/ which commences " sunt etiam in dicto 
 manerio tres seysones terra arabihs," viz. : — 
 
 Ad unam seysonam. Then follow twelve different 
 parcels of unequal size in different fields or " gewannen" 
 (campi). Summa CXLII acres 1 rod. 
 
 Ad aliam seysonam. Ten parcels in different fields. 
 Summa CLIII acr. dim. 
 
 Ad tertiam seysonam. Five parcels in different 
 places. Summa CXL acr. dim. 1 rod. 
 
 And also, the same author gives an account of per- 
 fectly similar inventories of the demesne lands of the 
 manors belonging to the Prior of Ely, which were 
 mixed up with, and used with, those of the tenants in 
 a community of three-field husbandry. In Swaffham 
 (probably the Swapham Prioris of the Eot. Hund. 
 11.484), in Cambridgeshire, the three " cultures "of 
 the terra dominica were 71, 94, and 93 acres in 
 extent. The first cultura of 71 acres consisted of 
 24 fields, and according to the detail of the fields of 
 each cultura, the description always included the note : 
 "memorandum, quod tota prasdicta terra jacebit quolibet 
 anno tertio in communi cum warectis." ^ 
 
 To what extent the parcelling at that time went in 
 England is shown, not only by many exchange and 
 purchase agreements in Maddox "Formulare Angli- 
 canum" (especially Nos.CCLVIII.,CCLXVII., CCLXX.), 
 where plots of ground of a few acres, consisting 
 of several separate parcels, are described; but also 
 perhaps, in a still higher degree in a passage in the 
 Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 11, where those who were 
 intrusted with the arrangement of the land registers, 
 declare, tres acrse inveniri non possunt. The Liber 
 
 ' Domesday of St. Paiil-s, p. cxxii. 
 
 ° Eegister of Worcester Priory, p. Ixvi. There were still manors existing 
 in our time, on which, copyhold and demesne lands lay together in open 
 intermixed fields. See Eeport on Enfranchisement of Copyhold Bil], 1661. 
 No. 931. 
 
 E 2 
 
53 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 Niger of Hexham Priory^ which, however, had its origin 
 in the latter end of the Middle Ages, records farther an 
 enormous scattering of the demesne and tenant's land. 
 The demesne lands, e.g. of a village (de Haghe), 
 amounting altogether to 189i- acres, lie in 68 fields, or 
 better, gewannen;^ but in very many fields they were 
 not joined together so as to make one plot, but were 
 broken up again into several disconnected pieces. Thus, 
 in this case, it runs : et in campo X in diversis locis 
 II acrse (p. 48). In Kirkve, in the county of York, a 
 bovata consisted of 12 acres of 30 plots of arable land, 
 and 3 parcels of meadows, each of 1 rod (p. 90). Of 
 the manor lands of Sulton it is expressly stated that 
 two-thirds of the same, " jacent discontinue per diversas 
 partes inter terras tenentium non separalia" (p. 72). 
 
 With regard to the succession of crops which was 
 compulsory in the cultivation of this arable land, Fleta 
 expressly reports that in his time, i.e. in the reign of 
 Edward I., there were two systems, that of the two- and 
 that of the three-field husbandry. On one plough land, 
 he says, were reckoned sometimes 160 and sometimes 
 180 acres — novies viginti acrae faciunt carucatam eo 
 quod LX in hieme, LX in quadragesima et LX in restate 
 pro warecto debent exarari, de terris vero bipartitis 
 debent ad carucam octies viginti acrae computari, ut 
 medietas pro warecto habeatur et medietas alia in 
 hieme et quadragesima seminetur (II. c. 72). Of these 
 two systems Eogers^ holds that the last, or two-field 
 husbandry, was the prevailing one in the Middle Ages, 
 without giving any grounds for his conclusion ; we, 
 however, must confess that, on the contrary, up to the 
 present time, we have only found trustworthy and 
 authentic proofs of a three-field husbandry, and these 
 
 ' The Priory of Hexliam ; its Title Deeds, Black Book, &c. Vol. II. 
 1865. 
 
 ' Gewannen means plots of land of a similar quantity belonging to the 
 township. — H. A. O. 
 
 - A History of Agriculture, &c., p. 15. Half the arable estate, as a rule, 
 lay in fallow, called warectatio in the language of the time. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 53 
 
 referred to the most different parts of middle and 
 eastern England. 
 
 We have already cited some places in which, without 
 any doubt, the three-field husbandry is alluded to, viz. 
 in two places in the Placitorum Abbrev. p. 300 (Cam- 
 bridgeshire), p. 251 (Nottinghamshire) ; and further, 
 Kot. Hundred II. 610 (Huntingdonshire), as well as 
 the descriptions of Nastock in Essex, and Swaffham in 
 Cambridgeshire. Out of the plethora of evidence for 
 this husbandry system, we will now make a selection 
 which will not only prove the great extension of the 
 same in England, but also, we beUeve, prove that in 
 the opinions of many official reporters the three-field 
 husbandry was the rule in those times, the existence of 
 which was considered as a matter of course. Among 
 other testimony in connection with this three-field 
 husbandry system, a lease of the year 1249 is 
 extremely interesting; it is to be found in Maddox 
 Formulare Anghcanum, No. CCXXWII. A certain Wil- 
 helmus de B. leases to the Abbot and Convent of 
 Bordesley (according to Dugdale Monast. Anglo., 
 situated in the county of Worcester) totam terram de 
 dominico (arable land and 1 meadow) ad decem croppos, 
 ita quod dicti Abbas et Conventus integre percipient 
 dictos decem croppos de terra arabili et chevesces (?) 
 quos receperunt ad warectum et quolibet anno interim 
 vesturam dicti prati. Pro his vero decem croppis percepi 
 ego dictus Wilhelmus — quinquaginta duos solidos et 
 sex denarios, insuper pro prato meo, quod remanebit 
 dictis monachis in defensa usque ad perceptionem 
 quindecim vesturarum, viginti duos, &c. Thus it was 
 taken, as a matter of course, that in fifteen years from 
 arable land in which the meadows yielded crops fifteen 
 times, ten harvests could be gathered. In like manner, 
 this system of husbandry was the basis of different 
 leases on the Manors of St. Paul's Church, as we learn 
 from William Hale Hale, in the Appendix to Domesday 
 of St. Paul's. The contract concerning Keneswurda, 
 in Hertfordshire, of the year 1152, says, "the lessee 
 must refund totum bladum LXV acrarum de hiemali 
 
54 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 blado seminatarum et similiter totum bladum LXX 
 acrarum de vernali blado seminatarum et quater XX 
 acros warectatos." Also a lease of the year 1232, in 
 wbicb the • manor property of a manor at Hexham- 
 on-Tyne (in the extreme north of the country) is 
 leased by the Archbishop of York to the Monastery 
 of Hexham for fifteen years, presupposes a three-field 
 husbandry. The agreement is concluded to "Whit- 
 suntide, and in it appears the proviso " that of the 
 arable land of the property jointly, 78 acres in 
 different fields shall be sown with oats, 51 J acres 
 with wheat and rye, 50 acres shall be fallow or terra 
 warecanda."^ After fifteen years the land must 
 be sown in a precisely similar manner, and given back 
 with the same fallow land. To be sure, here, the 
 spring wheat crops preponderated far over the winter 
 crops and fallow, but the originally equal di-sision of a 
 landed property into the three-fields, is frequently 
 effaced by subsequent change of possession, and then, 
 as we presume on other evidence, there is sometimes a 
 portion of the fields in the three-field husbandry, which 
 properly should have been cultivated with winter crops, 
 which is, exceptionally however, cultivated once with 
 summer crops and vice versa. In the Eot. Hund., as a 
 rule, the arable land of the properties is not particularly 
 described according to situation or division ; still we 
 find clear mention of the three-field husbandry, as in 
 the case of the demesne lands of a manor in Cam- 
 bridgeshire (Vol. II. p, 462) : t. in dominico VI" acras 
 et XIII acras terrgequsejacent in tribus campis et tertia 
 pars jacet in warecta. More frequently in this and 
 other land registers, in which the peasant services 
 are laid down, in the husbandry system in question, the 
 plough work is divided into three equal parts : in hieme," 
 in quadragesima, and in asstate ; or, ad semen hiemale, 
 or hivernagium, ad semen quadragesimale ; or, ad 
 
 "■ The Priory of HexLam, &c. Vol. II. p. 96. 
 
 ^ That ig late in autumn ; in the English Mediteval records Martinmas 
 v.as regularly reckoned in the winter (11 Nov.). 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 55 
 
 trimesium and ad warectumji thus, in the EotuH 
 Hundred II., pp. 440 and 441, 461, in Cambridge- 
 shire, 605 (debet arare ad tres seysiones), 659, 661 
 (arabit_ cum caruca sua per quatuor dies tempore 
 hiemah et per quatuor dies tempore quadragesimali et 
 per quatuor dies tempore sestivali) in Huntingdon- 
 shire ; but also on the borders of Wales, on the 
 properties of the Priory of Worcester, e.g. Eeg. Prior. 
 Wig. p. 9": tres araturse quatuor carucarum tribus 
 temporibus anni vid. quatuor ad hibernagium, quatuor 
 ad tri-mesium, quatuor ad warectum, p. 14\ quolibet 
 virgata arabit ad hybernagium tramesium et warectum 
 per unum diem, p. 19^ debet— terram arare sicut sibi 
 arat scil. semel ad yvernagium, et ad tramesium et ad 
 warectum, p. 61\ faciet tres aruras unam ad hyver- 
 nagium, unam ad tramesium, et unam ad warectum. 
 At least, just as often, the ploughwork occurs, only 
 divided into two seasons, winter sowing and summer 
 sowing; and sometimes also the obligation of the 
 peasants to plough during the whole year, with the 
 exception of harvest time, i.e. from Michaelmas to 
 Midsurumer, was expressed. From these regulations no 
 conclusion concerning any particular fixed system, either 
 of two- or three-field husbandry, can be arrived at. In 
 the first very frequently occurring case, when only a 
 double ploughing by the peasants is mentioned, we 
 must assume either that at the time in which the 
 services of the peasants were fixed, the fallow especially 
 was only once ploughed for autumnal crops, or that the 
 fallow ploughing was done exclusively with the manorial 
 ploughs, and that the peasant services carucee adjuta- 
 trices could be dispensed with, because the time for 
 fallow cultivation was much less limited than that for 
 seed ploughing. The fallow could be prepared in 
 the course of the summer at a more convenient time ; 
 
 ' " What in this country has usually a summer fallow, for which there are 
 three and sometimes four ploughings, the first is usually in November or 
 December, if the ground be dry, across the hvtts, but oftener lengthwise. The 
 following May it is ploughed across the furrows, which is called STiEElNa 
 (ruren)." Holland. General View of Agriculture of Cheshire. London, 
 1808.— H. A. 0. 
 
56 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 from the cultivated summer sowing till late into the 
 summer. It appears that peasants ploughed on the 
 fallow (warectare) from Hokeday (second Tuesday after 
 Easter) till Midsummer (Kot. Hund. II. 461), and to 
 Vincla Petri (Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 34).^ 
 
 But however this may be, in opposition to these 
 
 ' The plougMng at the latter end of summer, called " the first styrringe" 
 by Fitzherbert in the Boke of Husbandry, took place between the fallow and 
 the seed ploughing, and was commonly given to the fallow in the later 
 Middle Ages, appears not to have been the custom at the time when the niral 
 services were fixed. This second ploughing, intervening between the fallow- 
 ing and seed ploughing, called rebinare, has only been found mentioned 
 once in the Service Registers (Eegist. Prior. Wigorn. SSii , " item rebinavit 
 txnam acram.") But the Peasant Dues correspond to a much earlier state of 
 agriculture than that which existed really at the time that they were noted 
 in the Begisters ; for, according to Fleta, who wrote at the beginning of the 
 reign of Edward I., this rebinatio was already in use in the regular cultiva- 
 tion of the fallow ; he says (lib. ii. c. 82), " nam una acra pro frumento 
 trinam exigit aruram." He indicates (lib. ii. 73) April as the best time for 
 the faUow-balk (warectatio) ; while the second, the rebinatio, after Mid- 
 summer should be done " cum terra pullulaverit post warectum." And already 
 in the middle of the tweKth centuiy, in the counties bordering on London, 
 this second balk had come into vogue, at least for a part of the acreage that 
 was lying fallow. In the description of two leased farms, that date at this 
 period, and which are given by W. Hale Hale in Domesday of St. Paul's, 
 it is laid down, "ad curiam de Waletuna inventaj sunt IX viginti acras de 
 wareto de quibus XXVIII simt rebinati (sic) et IX faldati et XXXIII 
 seminati " (p. 131). And of another farm, " et LXXXVII acrfe de wareto, 
 et de his XXXVIII rebinati et I et demid. faldati et XV seminati" (p. 132). 
 According to a lease which is also recorded there, at Nastock (the partition 
 of the land of which is mentioned previously) of the year 1152, the farmer 
 at the expiration of the lease is bound to give up the property with 
 "magnam grangiam plenam ex una parte hiemali etex altera vemali blado, 
 et totum fenum iUius anni et totam saisonem waretatam, et LX acras 
 rebinatas, et faldicium et femicium secundum facultatem suam." Evidently 
 , it was not yet in the power of the tenant to bestow a careful cultivation on 
 the whole of the fallow acreage ; thus he was limited to two ploughings in 
 summer on part of the same ; on another part a very different kind of cul- 
 tivation was the rule, viz. that it should be manured by sheep penning 
 (faldicium), or stall dung (fenicium) ; and, finally, it appears that 
 Bometinies a part was already cultivated. This certainly is an earlier com- 
 mencement of an elaborate cultivation of fallow lands than we can point .to 
 in Germany. Hanssen (" Zeitschrift fiir die gesammte Staatswissenschaft," 
 B. XXI. s. 92) is of opinion that in Germany about the thirteenth century 
 they had arrived at the triple ploughing of the fallow. Thudichum 
 (" Gau-xmd Markverfassung," s. 159) places the " rebinatio," or second 
 ploughing, as first in use in the fourteenth century. The citations from the 
 " Landau Territorien," s. 56, taken from the twelfth century, are no certain 
 proofs. With regard, however, to the summer sowing of the fallow 
 Hanssen cites, 1. c. p. 95, several records of the Lower Rhine of the middle 
 and end of the thirteenth centurj% first quoted by Jacobi, as the first 
 indications of a partial cultivation of the fallow land. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AOES. 57 
 
 frequent and undoubted references to a three-field 
 husbandry, we have only met with one indication, 
 which it is highly probable may relate to a two-field 
 husbandry, and that is in the "Eegist. Prior. Wigorn." 
 which has already been referred to several times. Also 
 of the farm land of a manerium (Herfortun), it is 
 there remarked, in dominico — XII virgatas terras unde 
 quaelibet tenet in quolibet campo X acras, as well as 
 of the virgatas in villenagio. How much each had in 
 uno campo, and in alio campo ; and indeed these last 
 lie, if not quite exactly, still in nearly equal parts in 
 both fields (pp. 60, 62). Certainly it is possible to 
 refer this equal division to two parts of the whole 
 acreage, on which difi'erent systems of husbandry 
 existed; but the circumstance that equal, or nearly 
 equal portions, belonged to each possession, in both 
 fields, leads rather to a conclusion of a two-field hus- 
 bandry. Hence a two-field husbandry existed here 
 and there exceptionally, which cannot be a matter of 
 any doubt, as we have already seen from the words of 
 Fleta which have been given above ; but let us weigh 
 the fact that, in the sources lying before us, we have 
 only found one indication of this field system, in 
 opposition to the very general mention of a three-field 
 husbandry ; as well as that nearly always in more 
 modern times, where remains of the old village hus- 
 bandry still existed, the three-field husbandry was the 
 rule ; we may then assume — as long as the assertion 
 of the most recent historian of English agriculture is 
 unsupported by any proofs— that three-field husbandry, 
 as was also the case in the greatest part of Germany 
 and France, and also in eastern and midland England 
 from the North Sea to the borders of Wales, though 
 indeed not the only one, was still decidedly the pre- 
 vailing system. 
 
 A permanent pasturage necessarily belongs to a 
 three-field husbandry, and it appears that such was 
 seldom wanting altogether in England. It is remarked 
 of some properties of St. Paul's (Church : et non est 
 ibi pastura nisi cum quiescit dominicum per waina- 
 
58 ON THE AGBIOULTOBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 gium ^ (warectum ?) and, non est ibi pastura, nisi 
 quando terrse dominicse quiescunt alternatim incultas 
 (Domesday of St. Paul's, pp. 59, 69). ^ But this was 
 plainly an exceptional condition; there can be no doubt 
 that generally a great part of the country lay in an 
 uncultivated state, and, if we except the profit of wood, 
 was principally used as pasture. And this is also 
 certain, that the pasture was used in common by all 
 the tenants of the manor. Not seldom also pastures 
 separabiles, often of the smallest extent, were men- 
 tioned with {he terra dominica ; but wood or pasture 
 lands scarcely ever occur when the possessions of the 
 peasants are alluded to. In England, however, the 
 rights of property and use in the common pasturage 
 assumed a particular form, and this peculiarity has 
 not been without its influence on the later agrarian 
 development of the country. The lords of the manor 
 appear also as possessors of the lands which were in 
 common use and unpartitioned, the right of all other 
 possessors of lands to the common lands was merely 
 that of use on the property of another. In many cases 
 this condition of right may have had its origin from 
 the manors having been formerly farmed on land that 
 had never before been cultivated as single farm pro- 
 perties, apart from any agrarian community ; e.g. in 
 many of the extensive grants of land to temporal or 
 spiritual nobles which are reported in the Anglo-Saxon 
 records. The lord of the. manor was then originally in 
 fact the proprietor of the whole territory which was 
 conceded to him, and he conceded to his subtenentes 
 ■ particular portions for separate use, together with the 
 necessary right of pasturage on the unpartitioned land 
 
 • Wainagium = Gagnagium 1 It is not easy to see the meaning of this 
 word here unless it is tak^n in the sense of " lucrum." — H. A. O. 
 
 * The stubble pasturage was proportionately more valuable in England 
 on account of the custom of merely reaping the'ears of the com and leaving 
 the long stubble standing. It was then gathered for thatching. The 
 " colligere stipulam ad cooperiendam domum," or also simply, " collicere 
 stipulam," frequently appears among the services of the peasants, as well as 
 taxes to which the tenants were liable for every head of cattle, " quem," 
 or " quod habent in stipula." 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 59 
 
 which remained in his possession. But the very same 
 condition of right without doubt very frequently arose 
 from a temporary or direct vassal of the crown 
 holding a whole district in fief, and thus becoming a 
 superior proprietor of the whole common village dis- 
 trict (tenet manerium et villam). Several manors 
 might then be in the same villa or villata, but one of 
 them was the capital manor, and its possessor the 
 superior lord from whom the others held in fief, and 
 his proprietorship of the whole extent of the acreage 
 was only limited by the regulated rights of use which 
 his tenants possessed. So also with the common pas- 
 turage, to which the tenants had only a right of use, 
 while the lord of the manor was also lord of the soil in 
 waste of the manor. Hence in all juridical writings 
 concerning rights of common, the rights of the com- 
 moners to common pasture and wood were considered 
 as rights ^ of use on a property belonging to another. 
 The rights of common, appendant, appurtenant, and in 
 gross, as distinguished in the handbooks, are nothing 
 more than different kinds of pasture right on the soil 
 of another, and not different forms of property in 
 copartnership. But whether at the period of which we 
 
 ' L. Stein (" Verwaltungslehre," vii. 266) is of opinion that the right of 
 property in the common pasturage, which modem English law gives to the 
 lord of the manor, first had its origin in the 24 Carl. II. c. 13 : and in this 
 sense he combats an adverse assertion of Eoscher. Undoubtedly the right 
 of the king stood above that of all vassals, as their supreme feu lord, but 
 this right where the king was not himself lord of the manor was of no prac- 
 tical importance. The profitable right of the lord of the manor to the 
 common pasture was then, as it is now, subject to the common rights of the 
 copyholders. The above law, whose influence on the history of the common 
 lands in England has been judged of in a completely mistaken sense by 
 Stein, was of no importance whatever in that respect. The law did not 
 abrogate the supreme right of the king in all land and soil as Stein 
 imagined, but merely set aside a particular form of tenure, viz. the military 
 tenure, and changed it into another form of tenure which abeady existed 
 in the Middle Ages, together with the military tenure, the socagium 
 liberum (free and common socage). In the same way as with this tenure 
 the law allowed the tenures by " franc almoign " and " grand sergeanty," 
 to remain. Stein has also erred completely as to the meaning of joint 
 tenancy, when he states that since 24 Carl. II. c. 12, joint tenancy 
 indicates the different clashing conditions of rights to the common 
 pasturage. 
 
60 ON TEE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 are treating all pasture land in England was exclusively 
 manorial pasture, or whether it was not rather also 
 exceptionally given as proper common pasture, the 
 property of the commoners, appears to us to be doubt- 
 ful. In more modern times true common pastures 
 were not wanting in England, in relation to which 
 generally the rights of the lord of the manor as lord of 
 the soil were not opposed to the pasture rights of the 
 commoners, but were the common property of many 
 tenants ; it remains a question, however, whether in 
 these cases at a later period the right of property of the 
 lord of the manor was not first set aside. At least the 
 opinions of the most experienced witnesses concerning 
 this subject who were examined before the Inclosure 
 Committee tended towards this view.' But if, e.g. in 
 the Kotul. Hundred II. p. 534, it is recorded of a 
 villata in Cambridgeshire, " tota villata de Yameling 
 habet de pastura commxmi cum bruera XII^^ acras," 
 and in this villata there are different " feoda " whose 
 possessors are the under vassals (subtenentes) of 
 different crown vassals (tenentes in capite), none of 
 whom are described as "capitale manerium," then it 
 is not to be seen who could have been lord of the 
 manor on this " pastura communis," and we must 
 assume that the common pasture must have belonged 
 actually to the villata, i.e. either to the possessors of 
 the different feoda, or to aU the libere tenentes. 
 Similar relations, however, occur frequently in the 
 EotuH Hundred. ^ Sometimes it was mentioned 
 that a pasture or a heath with several villages or 
 manors which were not a united villata, were in 
 common, 1. c. IT. 602, 646 ; and proportionately frequent 
 are entries of similar large communities with regard 
 to forests, 1. c. II. 450, 602, 605. There, also, no 
 
 ' Mr. Blamire, Inclosure Report, 1844, No. 336, et seq. 
 
 ' Pastur33, marisci or bruerse totius villse, occur also, II. p. 420, 426, 
 484, 554, Ijos, totius villatae, 534, 535, pastura communis hominibus 
 of Stowe, 496 ; in other places it is laid Aovni in the same manner, or as 
 at p. 506, communa de Chippenham habet in bruariis VIII quarant in 
 longitudine et in latitudine IIII quarant Eadem villa habet in morisco, 
 &c. &c. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 61 
 
 precise lord of the manor is to be discovered, but we 
 must rather seek perhaps in these large associations 
 the last remains of larger district communities (Mark- 
 genossenschaften) . 
 
 With regard to the relation of the different kinds of 
 pasture rights to the manorial pasture, which at any 
 rate prevailed generally, we cannot find anything in 
 our mediaeval sources to add to the above-mentioned 
 distinctions of the same as they are to be found in all 
 legal handbooks. The most widespread among these 
 rights appears to have been common appendant, that 
 is, those rights of pasturage attached to the arable 
 land of the manor, which had their origin in the 
 times before the law " quia emptores " by which the 
 possessor could turn out a certain number of cattle to 
 graze according to the extent of the arable land. The 
 herds of cattle which those who possessed this right 
 could turn out, were designated in ancient times as 
 " cattle levant," and " cattle couchant," on the arable 
 land to which the rights belonged. These words 
 " levant " and " couchant " are however explained by 
 the courts of law of different periods in a different 
 manner. In the olden times they were meant to 
 express the cattle which were necessary to plough and 
 compester, or, merely to till the arable land ; in more 
 modern times as the nature of the cultivation of the 
 arable land was continually changing,^ the courts 
 decided that a right of pasture of common appendant, 
 gave a right to turn upon the common as many com- 
 monable cattle as the land to which the appendant 
 right is attached would maintain by its produce through 
 the winter. As many cattle as the land can maintain 
 during the winter are said to be levant and couchant 
 on the land. This is the German " Ueberwinterungs- 
 mass-stab," according to which common pastures in 
 Germany are at present divided, if there are no 
 particular rights to the contrary. 
 
 ' Wingrove Cooke, on " Inclosures and Rights of Commons," 4tli edit. 
 London, 1864. 
 
62 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 The second kind of pasturage right—" common 
 appurtenant," is attached likewise to certain lands, but 
 it rests, according to its origin, not on common law, 
 or on the time-out-of-mind homogeneity of arable land 
 and pasturage rights on a manor, but either on a 
 decided grant of the owner of the soil, or a right of 
 prescription in place of the grant. Thus the right 
 can attach to pieces of land which are not included in 
 the manor to which the pasture belongs, and above aU 
 it is only limited in its extent besides, by the capacity 
 of the pasturage to nourish the cattle, by the fixed 
 tenure of the grant, or the corresponding prescriptive 
 right. In case however of there being no determined 
 number or kind of cattle to be turned out, laid down, 
 then the limit for cattle levant and couchant on lands 
 to which the right appertained applied to the common 
 appendant. This Mnd of pasturage right frequently 
 occurred, and it especially applied practically to mast 
 and pasturage rights for swine and sheep, as well as a 
 right of pasturage for a strictly limited number of 
 cattle. Many landlords appear at that time to have 
 considered it desirable that such a limit should be put 
 to the number of the cattle to be turned out. The in- 
 structions on the visitation and improvement of the 
 manors prescribe openly in this sense, that by the 
 pastura forinseca, quae est communis, the number of 
 the cattle which the landlord and tenants may turn 
 out must be regulated. The commons in gross 
 according to then- nature have the smallest economical 
 importance among the different pasturage rights, that 
 is, common rights which do not attach to ground and 
 soil, but which exist without any regard to the property 
 in the land. 
 
 The lord of the manor very often received especial 
 taxes from those who had the right of using the 
 common pasturage; for instance, the serfs, besides 
 their other services, gave also as a mle especial rents 
 for pasturage, mast and wood herbagium, lessilver for 
 the pasturage, wodesilver for the use of the forests, 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 63 
 
 pannagium for tiie swine-mast, pro mortuo bosco for 
 the use of dry wood, &c. &c. 
 
 Further, the lord of the manor, as lord of the soil, 
 had the right to inclose for his particular use a portion 
 of the common pasture in so far as the pasture rights 
 of the commoners were not damaged thereby. This 
 right, called the right of approver,' seems for some 
 time to have been doubtful, but it was made valid and 
 determined expressly by two laws, Statute of Merton, 
 e. 4 (20 Henry III. 1235-36, p. Ch.), and Statute of 
 Westminster, 2 c. 46 (13 Edward I. 1285, p. Chr.) 
 The first of these laws makes mention that many large 
 landed proprietors who have made over in fief on their 
 manors to knights and others, small holdings free of 
 the manor, cannot make use of their waste lands and 
 forests, inasmuch as they had let to their vassals 
 the appurtenant pasturage rights, together with the 
 land plots (cum ipsi feofi'ati habeant sufficientem 
 pasturatn quantum pertinet ad tenementa sua). On 
 this account it was decided, that if the tenentes should 
 complain of the withdrawal of this right of pasturage, 
 and if upon a judicial inquiry it should appear that 
 they had as much pasture, "quantum sufiicit ad 
 tenementa sua cum libero ingressu et egressu," that 
 the complaint should be dismissed. This law estab- 
 lished the right of approver^ only as against the 
 protest of the proper tenants of the manor; and 
 Bracton for this reason expressly maintains that a lord 
 of the manor has no right to make any encroachment 
 on the common pasture against the protest of the 
 commoners who were not his tenentes. But the 
 second law above-mentioned places the protest of 
 
 ' Eight of approver. Whether is this from appropriare, to appropriate, 
 or from probiis approbare, to improve ? W. Hale Hale adopts the first 
 derivation, but manifestly the word is often used in the sense of to improve, 
 as appears from a passage quoted by him from Pleta II. 73, in which a 
 servant who administers a property for his master is styled " approvator 
 fidelis et optimus." 
 
 ' Approver means land bailiff ; approvatore the same as apprecator, i.o. 
 qui praedio accuratissime colendo invigilat ; which is evidently the seflse of 
 the passage mentioned above. — H. A. 0. 
 
64 ON THE AGBIGULTUEAL COMMUNITY 
 
 strange commoners on the same footing as that of the 
 vassals. Both classes then of commoners had only 
 the right to oppose the encroachments of the lords 
 of the manor on the common pasturage in case that 
 the pasture sufl&cient for their tenements was invaded, 
 or in case they claimed rights, not according to 
 common law, but on the grounds of an especial grant 
 of right of pasture ; then they must show that this 
 especial right had been infringed. Every complaint, 
 however, on the encroachment on pasture rights " shall 
 be dismissed, when such shall have been caused on the 
 common pasture by the building of a windmill, a sheep 
 or cattle shed, or the necessary enlargement of the 
 manor, farmyard, &c." In both these laws the ques- 
 tion only is concerning the complaint of the libere 
 tenentes, the viUani are not mentioned at all. We may 
 therefore feel satisfied that with regard to them the 
 lord of the manor was quite unfettered as to his 
 encroachments on the common pasturage. 
 
 There can be no question that this right of taking 
 into culture part of the common pasture in the Middle 
 Ages, from the originally large extent of the pasture 
 land, must have been of great value. Frequent use 
 was made of this right, and apparently the gradual 
 disappearance of the surplus of the waste lands ia con- 
 sequence of their progressive occupation and use by 
 the lords of the manor first caused these rights to be 
 taken under legislative regulation. The " Placita 
 curiae regis " brings to our knowledge lawsuits founded 
 on these laws immediately after their promulgation, 
 between lords of the manor and their tenants, and the 
 second volume of the Hundred Kolls contains numerous 
 complaiats to the juries appointed to report concerning 
 the illegal encroachments on the common rights. But 
 the land taken from the common pasture was not 
 always cultivated, but sometimes used as the private 
 manorial pasture or park.' A park that was inclosed 
 from the common pasture by the lord of the manor 
 
 ' The origin of many of the parks in England. — H. A. 0. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 65 
 
 is mentioned in the Eot. Hund. II. p. 605, and 
 Placit. Abbrev. § 223, where the complaints of the 
 commons are rejected, quod habent sufficientem com- 
 muniam extra prsedictum clausum. Still more frequent 
 are the citations of a " pastura separabilis," with the 
 addition, quae quondam fuit communis, or qute solebat 
 esse communis totius villse (II. 484, 650). 
 
 As we may here remark by anticipation, this general 
 position of the lord of the manor with regard to the 
 common pasture in England gave him much less 
 interest in the preservation of his tenants than in 
 places where such a manorial right to the ground and 
 soil of the common pasture did not exist. When the 
 pasture and wood was the common property of all 
 the commoners, and all households had their share in 
 the right of use of it, as was the case, according to 
 Thudichum, in many parts of Germany, the share of 
 the tenants in the common land was a motive for the 
 lords of the manor not to get rid of them. In 
 England, however, the right of property which the lords 
 of the manor possessed in pasture and forest was so 
 much the more valuable the less it was opposed by the 
 rights of use of the commoners. 
 
 The greater the importance to which cattle-breeding 
 attained in the course of the agricultural development, 
 the more these conditions weighed against the small 
 landed proprietors. To this may be added that the 
 cattle-breeding of the tenants was still subjected to 
 many oppressive restrictions in favour of the lord of 
 the manor. Above all, villeins were, as it appears 
 universally bound to obtain the permission of the lord 
 of the manor if they wished to sell cattle to persons 
 not belonging to the manor, and for this permission 
 they were obliged to pay a tax. Perhaps these restric- 
 tions arose from the indispensable necessity for the 
 draught cattle of the vassals in the cultivation of the 
 manor lands. The definitions concerning these restric- 
 tions which are found to occur here and there, appear 
 to us to signify that the peasant might freely sell his- 
 
66 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 OX or young steer, if it had not been worked ; but when 
 once put in the team he could not alienate it without 
 the consent of the lord of the manor.^ 
 
 Still more important than these restrictions on the 
 free sale of cattle was the so-called "jus faldse" (right 
 of fold of the lord of the manor) ; that is, the right to 
 take a flock of sheep and to pen them upon his own 
 fields for the purpose of manuring them.^ This right 
 obHged the vassals to pen their sheep on the manorial pas- 
 ture, so that the whole foldage might go to the benefit 
 of the manorial fields.^ Only some of the larger free 
 possessors had sometimes besides the lord of the manor 
 possessed the same rights ; it is then expressed in the 
 land registers, "tenet cum libertate faldse," or " unius 
 faldae," or " dimidise faldae." In a series of passages 
 'we find the duration of this duty of the vassals given, 
 e.g. " item debent habere bidentes suos in falda domini 
 a die hokesday* (the second Tuesday after Easter) 
 usque ad festum S. Martini" (Eot. Hund. II. 458, 459), 
 or, " et oves erunt in falda domini ah hokesday usque 
 adfest. S. Martini " (II. 539), or, " et omnes isti (scil. 
 libere tenentes) ponent faldam suam singulis annis 
 super terram dominicam ah hokeday usque ad vincla "^ 
 (Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 105). As may be imagined, 
 great importance was attached to this jus faldse, and 
 complaints were frequently heard that such a one 
 
 ■ Eot. Himd. II. 463 : " si ipse habeat puUmn vel bovicnlmn et 
 laboravit cum illo, non potest vendere sine licentia domini, si non laboravit, 
 licitum ei vendere sine licentia." 
 
 ° Obligatio quo tenentur vassalli oves suas in faldam. dominicam immit- 
 tere ad stercojandos illius agros. Du Cange. — H. A. O. 
 
 ' On the same principle that a big boy makes a small one get into his 
 bed to warm it on a cold night. — H. A. O. 
 
 * Hokeday, or Hockday, i.e., highday. A holiday formerly held in 
 England on the second Tuesday after Easter, to commemorate the ex- 
 pulsion of the Danes in the time of Ethebed. Hishdavs and hoUdavs. 
 -H.A.O. ^ 
 
 ' Usque ad vincla, subaud. Petri, 13 August, o. s. St. Peter's day. 
 — H. A. 0. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 67 
 
 "levavit injuste faldam." In the pure three-field 
 husbandry, with free range of pasture for cattle on the 
 permanent pastures, the production of stall manure 
 was very scanty, and the transport and spreading of it 
 on the arable land very expensive as compared with the 
 price of the produce ; thus the penning of sheep on 
 the bare fallow was the more valuable. The fact that 
 the whole of the benefit was to the terra domini must 
 certainly have proved disadvantageous to the peasant 
 husbandry. However, there was so far a compensation 
 in that the draught cattle of the peasants were propor- 
 tionately more numerous than those of the manor, 
 because, indeed, the manor lands for the most part were 
 cultivated with the teams of the peasants. Hence, 
 without doubt, as much less of the produce of the 
 peasants' land was sold than that of the manor farms, 
 much more was employed for the nourishment of the 
 labourer and the draught cattle, and on this account 
 the peasants could more easily dispense with sheep- 
 penning in their husbandry. 
 
 But in the latter centuries of the Middle Ages a very 
 important change entered into this, upon the whole, 
 well-constituted agrarian system, which thus far we 
 have endeavoured to describe. 
 
 A money economy (geldwirthschaft), as opposed to 
 the mediaeval barter in kind, became established in 
 England at a much earlier period, and far more ex- 
 tensively, than in the great inland countries of the 
 European continent. The principal reason of this was 
 the same which as far back as classical antiquity had 
 caused a proportionately active traffic, and gave such 
 an impulse to a money economy, viz. the superior 
 communication by sea and its inlets, which ran deep 
 into the land, and on the many slowly-flowing rivers, 
 which were on that account more easily navigable. No 
 inaccessible mountains, no extensive tracts of land, 
 separated the different parts of England from one 
 another, or from the . emporiums of external trade on 
 the sea coast. Added to this, the power of the State 
 
 f2 
 
68 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 was greater since the Norman Conquest than in conti- 
 nental countries, and the more efficient general poHce 
 system for preserving the puhlic peace afforded a secu- 
 rity for trading which at that time was only exceptional 
 on the continent; and finally, the freedom of the inland 
 trade was not disturbed by duties, king's staple, and 
 other impediments of a similar nature, as in Germany 
 and elsewhere. Hence it is easy to conceiye that early 
 in the Middle Ages the natural economical unity of the 
 manor and community of villages had already begun to 
 be dissolved. 
 
 In the first place a change was worked in the personal 
 service of the vassals, on which, as we have seen, the 
 original cultivation of the manor lands depended, by 
 converting it into a fixed money rent. In the thirteenth 
 century we already find adserations ^ on the properties 
 of the monastery of Worcester and St. Paul's Church 
 partially carried out. In the land register of the first 
 are cited " virgatge in villenagio," and still more fre- 
 quently " cotarii," who merely paid a money rent ; in 
 very many registers there is a comparison of dues, as 
 to how they shall be paid, in work,^ natural dues, 
 heriots, and the money rent which the peasant pro- 
 prietor had to pay instead of those services, e.g. IDS'", 
 " in hoc manerio sunt viii. "virgatae servilis conditionis, 
 quarum quaehbet si censat, dabit ad quemlibet trium 
 terminorum xii. d. pro omni servitio, ut dicunt." In 
 other places a distinction is made : " virgata ad censum 
 posita — ad operationem," e.g. 69% IV', S^ ; or, " si esset 
 ad firmam — ad operationem," e.g. 43^ 51^. Also in the 
 first case, when the place was " ad censum," or, " ad 
 firmam," the possessor often had some work to perform, 
 particularly in harvesting, but very much less than 
 when the hides stood on the footing of "ad opera- 
 tionem." So also a distinction was made between the 
 
 ' Adaeratio, i.e. fixiug a money value on labour services, or instead of 
 them.— H. A. O. 
 
 ^ Naturalesia. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 69 
 
 «' novae " and the " antiques consuetudines villanorum" 
 (p. 102"''), when the novas included less work and larger 
 money dues. Also in the EotuH Hundred are to be 
 found clear traces of the gradual change of service into 
 wages, e.g. II. 409, 410, and in other places : " reddit pro 
 
 operibus, ....s cl. ad voluntatem domini." Manifestly 
 
 these valuations for services (adseratio) could only hold 
 good by the mutual consent of those who paid and 
 those who claimed the services, and the addition " ad 
 voluntatem domini," shows that the lord of the soil 
 retained expressly the right to return to the personal 
 services. However, as it generally happens under such 
 circumstances, the new deviation from the old idea of 
 law became fixed and established, and a one-sided return 
 to the old condition — which besides as a rule with 
 the progressing money economy was still more against 
 the interest of both parties — was found to be unfair and 
 indeed unjust. Eogers, it is true, conjectures that the 
 scarcity of labour which arose in consequence of the 
 great plague, and the high rate of daily wages, led 
 the lords of the manor to attempt to compel the old 
 services, and that on account of this the insurrection 
 in the year 1381 arose. It does not appear that these 
 conjectures rest on any valid foundation, but they are 
 not wholly improbable. The prices which were fixed 
 in this valuation of services (adeeratio) were generally 
 very low, and the depopulation after the plague, as 
 Eogers proves, caused a considerable rise in the rate of 
 daily wages. The interest which the lord of the manor 
 had in making such an attempt was hence very apparent, 
 but in every case there was no permanent result. Oc- 
 casionally agricultural services of vassals in England 
 were preserved till the sixteenth century ; for a change 
 of this kind which did not rest upon a general law, as 
 was the case with regard to the valuations of services, 
 was not accomplished without some exceptions. But, 
 that agricultural services were, for the most part, con- 
 verted into money wages at the end of the Middle Ages 
 is a most remarkable sign of an advanced agricultural 
 development. From this we see very clearly that the 
 
70 ON TEE AGBIGULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 turning into cash of agricultural produce, enabled the 
 large properties without difficulty to make con- 
 siderable immediate outlay for labour wages, and at 
 the same time the peasants had learnt so far the value 
 of their work and freedom, that they were led to prefer 
 paying rent to rendering Vassal service. Under favour 
 of these conditions a regular free class of labourers 
 arose in England, who were under strict police regula- 
 tion (Statute of Labourers), but on a much better footing 
 than the serfs under the Norman Conqueror. It is 
 highly probable that the cotarii, to whom we have above 
 alluded, were the progenitors of this class ; their small 
 possessions, and the use of the common pasture for 
 the grazing of one or several cattle, gave them a security 
 for their livelihood, which is whoUy wanting to the 
 day labourer of our time in England. 
 
 As, however, from this decline in the use of compulsory 
 agricultural service, the position of the peasant became 
 a more favourable one, so also his personal status and 
 his rights on the land and soil he cultivated became im- 
 proved. Undoubtedly, the villanus, according to strict 
 law, was still a serf, and what he earned was for his 
 lord ; but still his legal position, as described by Littleton, 
 was somewhat better than that laid down by Bracton. 
 He could seek redress independently, from the law 
 against all, except his own lord, and, under certain 
 circumstances, he had even a right to sue him. But 
 what, in a still greater measure, weighed in the balance 
 against the progress of the serfs in their legal rela- 
 tions was their rapidly decreasing numbers in the last 
 centuries of the Middle Ages. In a state of economy, 
 in which a change of personal service for a wages sys- 
 tem is accomplished by the mutual agreement of the 
 contracting parties, personal serfdom cannot long be 
 maintained. Numerous records concerning manumis- 
 sion are possessed by us, and in an equal degree, evi- 
 dence of the general movement towards giving freedom 
 to the serfs, is furnished by the repeated complaints to 
 ParUament in the fourteenth century of the wholesale 
 absconding of the viUani, and, above all, of the support 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 71 
 
 afforded to the fugitive peasants by the tribunals and- 
 the towns. They complained that it was scarcely pos- 
 sible to reclaim a villanus who had escaped to another 
 county or to London.^ The property of the peasants, 
 whether it was settled at a money rent, or was still on 
 the service system, fell gradually more and more into 
 the possession of freemen. It was no longer a matter 
 of course that the peasant was a serf; and the idea of 
 both was no longer expressed by the same expression of 
 villanus. Already, at the commencement of the four- 
 teenth century, the " Statutum de Extentis Manerii" 
 calls the old serfs "custumarii tenentes,!' and the land 
 register of the monastery of Hexham (which we have 
 referred to on several occasions) speaks of " husbands," 
 and "terrae husband"; just as in Mecklenburg the 
 earlier serf peasants were called " Hauswirthe," and it 
 was only exceptionally that these " husbands " were 
 expressly noticed in their quality as " nativi domini." 
 
 Even as the personal position of the peasant became 
 altered in the last centuries of the' Middle Ages, so also 
 the character of his tenure by villenage became con- 
 verted into tenure by copy of the court roll, quite 
 imperceptibly, and without the intervention of any 
 legislation. Eeeves mentions that in the law 42 
 Edward III. 35. tenants per roll, " solonque le volunt 
 le seigniour," first occur, and that the same in 14 
 Henry IV. 34. are called copyholders.^ Littleton cites 
 two among the different kinds of tenure — tenure " per 
 copy de court roll," and tenure " per le verge " — which 
 are plainly derived from the old villenagium. Con- 
 cerning the tenants " per le verge," he says that in all 
 essential points they are of the same kind as the 
 copyholders (sont en tiel nature come tenants per le 
 copy de court roll) ; he merely distinguishes them ac- 
 
 ' John Eeeves. History of tlie English Law. Dublin, 1787. Vol. iii. 
 308, et seq. 
 
 ' See the Extracts from the Rolls of Parliament, by Thomas Wright, on 
 the political condition of the English peasantry during the Middle Ages, 
 in the Archseologia, vol. xxx. London, 1844, p. 344, et seq. 
 
73 ON THE AGBIGULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 cording to the peculiar form of the assignment of these 
 possessions (per virgam). According to him, both 
 (as the copyholders still are) were tenants " a volunt le 
 seignior " (at the will of the lord') ; but he adds, " _so- 
 lonque le custome de mesme le manor " (and according 
 to the custom of the manor); for, in the reign of 
 Edward IV., the royal courts had begun to establish 
 the principle, that these tenants certainly were tenants 
 at the will of the lord of the manor, but that his will 
 could not violate the custorti of the manor on which 
 the tenant was domiciled. Littleton (Instit, I. c.ix. 
 p. 77) mentions two celebrated rulings by Chief Justices 
 (Edward IV.) Brian and Danby, which laid down that 
 a custumary tenant who fulfilled his dues towards 
 the lord of the manor had an action for trespass 
 against the lord who would deprive him of his pos- 
 sessions. 
 
 The same development of cultivation, which thus 
 changed the old condition of the peasantry, also 
 paved the way to an early inauguration of leases. 
 A number of leases of great farms, in which the lessee 
 engages to pay a fixed annual rent in money, are speci- 
 fied by Hale Hale from the archives of St. Paul's in 
 the twelfth century. The lessees, as it appears, were 
 universally canonici of St. Paul's, and the leases were 
 for the lives of the contractors (" quamdiu vixerit et 
 inde firmam bene reddiderit," or " fideHter servierit").' 
 Somewhat later arise the series of leases for fixed rents, 
 which Maddox specifies in the Formulare Anglicanum, 
 and in the thirteenth century the villani even take over 
 possession of the whole of the terra dominica, c. pertin,^ 
 on the estate of the monastery of Worcester on a lease 
 at a fixed money rent. The degree in which a money 
 economy was already developed in this direction is 
 
 ' Scriven, a treatise on copyhold, custumary freehold, and ancient de- 
 mesne tenure, 3rd edit. Lond. 1833. Vol. i. p. 55. A copyholder has, in 
 judgment of law, but an estate at will. 
 
 ^ " The whole of the manor lands, with all appurtenances thereunto 
 belonging."— H. A. 0. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 73 
 
 shown by the receipts in the land registers of all the 
 constituent parts of the manors where the annual net 
 revenue or rents are given. The " statutum de extentis 
 manerii " orders simply that " above all must be speci- 
 fied quantum valet quaelibet acra per se per annum." 
 The lease system gained a great extension, as speci- 
 fied by Eogers, in the second half of the fourteenth 
 century. The important rise in the rate of labour- 
 wages after the plague^ caused the system of farming 
 lands on account of the lords of the manor, which up 
 to that time was still the most prevalent, to be mani- 
 festly unprofitable; hired labour had become dispro- 
 portionately dear, the old compulsory service having 
 been abolished. Nothing therefore remained but to 
 lease the manor lands (Eogers, 1. cit. 24). While further, 
 the old leases are all so settled that the lessee takes 
 over the inventory, which is enumerated and appraised 
 in the lease, and which he undertakes to restore, and, 
 according to Eogers, in, the fifteenth century, on the 
 property of the colleges (whose archives he has made 
 use of) the letting for short periods, and without any 
 inventory, becomes more in vogue.^ But the unpro- 
 fitableness of self-farming, which led to leasing, pro- 
 bably also led to alienations to small freeholders, who 
 
 ' Such, was the rise in wages that the King and Parliament took up the 
 matter, as is shown by the Statute of Labourers, 23 Edw. III. " Come 
 nadgairs contra le malice de servanty qu'eux furent pareissouses et nient 
 voillant servir apres la pestilence sanz trop outrageouses lowers prendre, 
 feut ordine par notre seignur le Eoi," &c. &c. ; i.e. as lately it was ordained 
 against the pernicious practices of labourers, inasmuch as they were lazy and 
 refused to work after the plague, except at outrageous wages, by our lord the 
 King, &c. &c. The statute then goes on to fix a rate at which the labourer 
 was compelled to work under pain of imprisonment. A labourer got two- 
 pence or threepence a day, according to the season. — H. A. 0. 
 
 ' Rogers mentions the leases with manorial inventories as closely analo- 
 gous to the metairie* of South-Western Europe (p. 25) ; but the essence 
 of the metairie does not consist in that the " half farmer " has no proper 
 inventory, but in the partitioned husbandry ; i.e. it consists in that the land- 
 lord draws no fixed money rent, or personal services, but takes a moiety of 
 the farm produce. 
 
 * Metairie is a word derived from the mediaeval Latin term medietare, 
 because under the system the land was cultivated under the conditions " ad 
 medietatem fructuum." — H. A. 0. 
 
74 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 paid to the landlord a fixed annual ground-rent (quit- 
 rent).^ The increase of these freeholders, which is 
 reported by many writers, in the later times of the 
 Middle Ages, agrees with this view. 
 
 Thus, into the fifteenth century, the agrarian revolu- 
 tion of the Middle Ages was, on the whole, advan- 
 tageous to the position of small landed proprietors ; but, 
 from this time forward, the turning point was reached, 
 and its further development was, in all its degrees, 
 as ruinous to their interests as it had before been 
 favourable. 
 
 Unfortunately, the agrarian records, which must 
 exist in England of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 centuries in great numbers, though much dispersed, 
 are not published equally with those of an earher 
 period, and we have not been in a position to supply 
 these essential lacunae in our elementary studies 
 on the spot. Probably these would show that already 
 in the fourteenth, and most certainly in the fifteenth 
 century, the agitation sprung up which led to the great 
 agrarian revolution under the rule of the Tudors. 
 
 Indications of this later revolution had already ap- 
 peared on two occasions ; once in the above described 
 attempts of the larger landed proprietors to secede 
 from the community in land. The manner in which 
 these secessions are mentioned in the records of the 
 thirteenth century show clearly that even at that 
 time these secessions were regarded as advantageous, 
 and in the second place, also, the joining the smaller 
 peasants' possessions to the larger ones. The lord of 
 the manor had no longer an interest (after the discon- 
 tinuance of services) in the preservation of the small ■ 
 peasant ; it was more convenient for him to draw the 
 same amount of rents from a smaller number ; it was 
 advantageous to emancipate the manorial pastures 
 from pasturage rights, and certainly much easier to 
 
 ' Quit-rent, from " quietus redditus," a rent reserved for grants of land 
 by the payment of which the tenant was " quieted," or quit from all other 
 service. Blackstone. — H. A. O. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 75 
 
 convert large peasant properties into leasehold tenures 
 than smaller ones. William Hale Hale records that 
 the archives of St. Paul's Church already, in the four- 
 teenth century, afford many examples of these junctions 
 of the smaller villan tenements to a few large ones. 
 (Reg. Prior. Wig. p. xix.) We first perceive, in the 
 reign of Henry VII., the complaints, subsequently so 
 numerous, of the decreasing numbers of the small 
 landed proprietors, of the inclosures, and encroach- 
 ments on the pasture. Two laws from the fourth year 
 of that king's reign (1488) give public expression to 
 the apprehension of the agrarian revolution which was 
 then being carried into execution. The first, cap. 16, 
 particularly noticed by historians, relates especially 
 to the grass husbandry, and the depopulation of the 
 Isle of Wight; the other, cap. 19, "an acte against 
 pulling down of tounes,"^ is of a general character, 
 and applies to the whole country. " Many houses and 
 villages in the kingdom are deserted, the arable land 
 belonging to them is inclosed and converted into pas- 
 turage, and idleness (the cause of all evil) is therefore 
 generally prevalent. Where, formerly, two hundred 
 men supported themselves by honest labour, are now 
 only to be seen two or three shepherds." In the first 
 law, which referred to the Isle of Wight, on account of 
 the especial necessity which still existed for a strong 
 population, as a defence against the French and other 
 enemies, it was ordered that no one should have a 
 leasehold of more than ten marks of yearly rent,' and 
 that no one should pull down farm buildings, or suffer 
 them to fall into decay. The second lays down, quite 
 generally, that all dwelling and farm buildings that 
 within the last three years have been leased with 
 twenty acres of land, shall be preserved in as far as 
 they are necessary for carrying on all arable husbandry. 
 If this law should be violated, the next superior feudal 
 lord, from whom the land in question was held on 
 
 ' Town tere is manifestly used in its old sense, not of city, but dwelling- 
 place, or village. 
 
76 ON TEE AGRIGULTCBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 lease, shall take half the revenue of the land, farm 
 buildings of which have not been maintained. 
 
 These complaints may be traced throughout the six- 
 teenth century into the beginning of the seventeenth, 
 in the same rhanner, -without ceasing. 
 
 We find them also, in the following reign, again most 
 plainly expressed in the Statute Book, in the introduc- 
 tion to the laws by which the practice of encroachments 
 was sought to be restrained. Thus, in 6 Henry VIII. 
 c. 5, and 7 Henry VIII. c. 1, where principally the 
 malpractice is plainly described, as in the just cited law 
 of Henry VII. : — "Pulling downe and destruction of 
 townes wythin thys realme and laying to pasture, 
 landes which customably have been manured and occu- 
 pyed wyth tyllage and husbandry." When such houses, 
 it goes on to say, have been destroyed since the first 
 day of the present Parliament, they are immediately to 
 be rebuilt, and the inclosed lands restored to tillage. 
 The penalty for violation of the law is the same as that 
 of 4 Henry VII. c. 19, but with the aggravation that, if 
 the next feudal lord should neglect to interpose, then 
 the next superior, and finally, above all, . the king, is 
 empowered to enforce the penalty. These last ruhngs 
 were, later (24 Henry VIII. c. 24), repeated, with the 
 modification that they applied to all agricultural build- 
 ings which had fallen into decay since 4 Henry VH., 
 as well as to arable land which had been converted into 
 pasture, and that generally for 30-50 acres of arable 
 land, a dwelling-house should be estabHshed in which a 
 respectable man could live. Shortly after this followed 
 the law 25 Henry VIII. c. 12, 13 (1533,4), which is 
 especially directed against the encroachments for sheep 
 farming. "Different individuals in the last years had 
 accumulated in their own hands a number of landed 
 properties, a multitude of cattle, and especially of 
 sheep. Some of them possessed 24,000 sheep, others 
 10,000, &c. &c. Tillage is thereby displaced, the 
 country depopulated, and the price of sheep and wool 
 raised in an unheard-of manner (!). No one, therefore, 
 shall possess more than 2,000 sheep, with the excep- 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 77 
 
 tion of laymen upon their own inheritance, who may 
 possess as many as they please ; but they may not 
 carry on sheep farming on other properties." Especially, 
 it was also mentioned, that in Suffolk and Norfolk the 
 owners of foldcourses within the properties and manors 
 over which their rights extended, redeemed or rented 
 from all the other landed proprietors, who had the 
 right to pasture their sheep with the manorial flock, 
 their pasture right; and against this custom a prohibi- 
 tion was issued. About the middle of the sixteenth 
 century the discontent at this agrarian revolution arose 
 to an iinmense height ; the pamphlets of the time are 
 filled with it, and the most celebrated preachers 
 zealously inveighed against it as the ruling sin of the 
 times. This discontent finally increased, till an open 
 insurrection was the result. ' 
 
 Bishop Latimer,^ in his famous " Sermon of the 
 Plough," preached before the Court of Edward VI. on 
 the 8th March, 1549, complains that, where formerly 
 there were dwellings and inhabitants, now there is only 
 the shepherd and his dog. He reproaches the nobles, 
 who were among his audience, as " inclosers, graziers, 
 and rent-raisers," who made dowerless slaves of the 
 English yeomanry. Still more vehemently Bernard 
 Gilpin raises his voice against the conduct of the 
 gentlemen : — " To drive poor people out of their dwell- 
 ings they consider no crime, but say the land belongs 
 to them, and then cast them out of their homes like 
 vermin. Thousands in England now beg from door 
 to door who formerly kept honest houses. Never (said 
 he) were there so many gentlemen and so little gentle- 
 nes."^ Scory (Bishop of Eochester), in the year 1651, 
 presented a petition to the king, in which he com- 
 plains that now there are only "ten ploughs where 
 formerly there were from forty to fifty." Two acres 
 
 ' The Sermons of the Rev. Father in God and Constant Martyr of J. Ch., 
 Hugh Latimer. 
 
 - ' Extract in Strype, Eccl. Mem., vol. ii. p. 441. Edit. 1721. Froude, 
 1. c. p. 73. 
 
78 ON THE AGBIOULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 out of three have been put out of culture, and where 
 his Majesty's predecessors had a hundred men fit for 
 service, now there are scarcely half that number, and 
 those in a much worse position. The country popula- 
 tion in England would soon be " more like the slavery 
 and peasantry of France than the ancient and godly 
 yeomanry of England."^ 
 
 After the death of Henry VIII. the Lord Protector, 
 who appears not to have been wanting in sympathy 
 for the distress of the lower classes in the country, 
 endeavoured to control the evil in a more efficient 
 manner than by laws v,'hich remained a mere dead 
 letter. He appointed an extraordinary commission, 
 " The King's Commission for the Eedress of Inclosures 
 in Oxford, Berkshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Bed- 
 fordshire, Buckingham, and Northampton, the counties 
 principally concerned, composed of a jury of twelve 
 good and leful men, to inquire into the violations of 
 the law." He exhorted the commission to fulfil their 
 office without any respect to persons, and fearlessly to 
 bring to account those who had violated the laws of 
 Henry VIII. for the maintenance of tillage. A kind 
 of memorial has been handed down to us of the state 
 of things, which was laid before the commission, by 
 John Hales, one of their most active members. These 
 could not be painted in darker colours than they are 
 there described. Euined dwellings and evicted hus- 
 bandmen were everywhere to be seen ; where formerly 
 12,000 men dwelt there were now scarcely 4,000 ; 
 sheep and oxen, destined to be eaten by man, have 
 devoured men ; the defensive power of the country had 
 fallen into danger by depopulation ; the king had been 
 obliged to take into his service foreign troops, German, 
 Italian, and Spanish, &c. &c. He specifies the follow- 
 ing five principal heads of grievances : — Ruin of vil- 
 lages and agricultural buildings ; conversion of arable 
 
 ' And by their natural logic they would reason, " how these conjugate, 
 these yoke-feUows, gentleman and gentlenes should be banished so far 
 asunder." Strype, vol. ii. part ii. p. 130.— H. A. 0. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 70 
 
 land into pasture ; great multitude of sheep ; amal- 
 gamation of farms ; and the failure of hospitality on 
 account of the dissolution of monasteries. He also 
 expressly mentions that inclosures (in themselves), 
 which every one undertakes himself on his own ground 
 and soil, are beneficial to the common good, the ques- 
 tion only being of such inclosures by which the rights 
 of others suffered, when " houses of husbandry" were 
 pulled down, or arable land converted to pasture. 
 
 The deplorable and resultless issue of this extra- 
 ordinary commission, which was greeted with great 
 rejoicing by the country people, is sufficiently well 
 known. So great was the power of the provincial 
 nobility in the counties, and so weak the protecting 
 and helping hand of the central government, that, in 
 many places, the witnesses who were summoned did 
 not dare to appear ; and in others, those who had given 
 truthful depositions were persecuted in various ways 
 by the landlords.' Add to this, the nobles had resolute 
 friends among the commissioners ; so that at last the 
 whole official report of the commission terminated in 
 a petition to Parliament : " a large landed proprietor of 
 more than 100 marks net revenue should not himself 
 farm more of his land than is sufficient for his house- 
 hold ; the great leasehold farms should be partitioned ; 
 and the persons who hold abbey lands should be obliged 
 to keep an honest continual house and household on 
 the same." ^ John Hales even, who had gone into the 
 matter with so much zeal, proposed to the king to 
 grant a general pardon for all that had happened — for 
 the benefit of the rich inclosers as well as of the poor 
 sufferers — in the hope that the rich violators of the 
 law would amend.^ In connection, however, with the 
 petition of the commission, he also brought three bills 
 into Parliament : the first had for its object the rebuild- 
 ing of the demolished houses and the preservation of 
 
 ' Strype, Memorials, vol. ii. p. 172. 
 
 " An Extract from the Petition, according to M.S. Domestic Edward VI., 
 vol. V. (State Paper Office), is to be found in Froude, 1. cit. vol. v. 78, 79. 
 ' For the benefit of rich inclosers as well as the poor sufferers. — Strype, 1. cit. 
 
80 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 tillage ; the second was directed against raising the 
 prices of the necessaries of Hfe, and especially against 
 the presumed main cause of the same — the cattle trade ; 
 and the third was for providing that the great sheep 
 farmers should hold and rear their sheep and milch 
 cows in a fixed proportion as to number. The first, 
 however, was thrown out by the Upper House, and the 
 second and third experienced the same fate in the 
 Lower; and John Hales complained that the sheep 
 were entrusted to the protection of the wolf.^ 
 
 It is no wonder that under such circumstances the 
 country population attempted to apply a remedy them- 
 selves. The formidable insurrection of the peasantry 
 in 1549, in the eastern counties, had principally for 
 its object the removal of the inclosures. Similar dis- 
 turbances were frequently repeated at a later period on 
 a smaller scale ; and even at the end of the sixteenth 
 and commencement of the seventeenth century, insur- 
 rections of the peasants occurred in Oxfordshire, and 
 other places in central England, in order to root out 
 the hedges (levellers) and to restore the tillage. 
 
 We may learn also that the agrarian revolution pro- 
 gressed under Elizabeth, from — among other things — 
 an interesting dialogue, " A compendious or briefe 
 examination of certayne ordinary complaints," &c., by 
 W. S., gentleman, of London, 1581.^ In this dialogue, 
 the inclosures, as the crying evil of the times, were dis- 
 cussed by different persons — a doctor, a nobleman, and 
 a farmer. The farmer complains that he and his class 
 are ruined by the inclosures, which raise rents and 
 cause a dearth of arable land. He has witnessed 
 in his district, in a circuit of less than six English 
 miles, in the last seven years, a dozen ploughs lying 
 idle ; and lands where sixty persons and more had 
 gained their living, were now occupied by the cattle of 
 one (f . 3) . The farmers themselves, he continues, instead 
 
 ' Parliament. Hist. L p. 59, and Strype, Memor. ii. 134. 
 ^ See concerning this dialomie the author's essay in the " Zeitschrift fiir 
 die Gessammte Staatswissenschaft," 1863, vol. xix. p. 369, et seq. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 81 
 
 of exclusively cultivating wheat, found themselves 
 necessitated to take to grass cultivation and cattle 
 breeding, for there was more to be gained by having 
 ten acres in grass thantwenty under grain cultivation. 
 
 In like manner the doctor (the leader of the dis- 
 cussion) agrees that the realm threatens to be in 
 a highly dangerous position through the pernicious 
 depopulation, of the country, the number of idle and 
 unemployed persons, and the disturbances and in- 
 surrections connected therewith' which have latterly 
 occurred in the country. 
 
 With regard to the proper agricultural character of 
 these movements, they are represented commonly as 
 having been caused by an exclusively pure pasture 
 husbandry, which expelled the small tillage husband- 
 men. Different circumstances, however, and witnesses, 
 show us clearly that this, at least for the most part, 
 was not the case. Already the low price of wheat, 
 concerning which nearly all the authorities of the time 
 complain, is sufficient to throw doubt on the prevailing 
 opinion. " All things are fearfully dear, with the sole 
 exception of wheat," says John Hales, in the above- 
 mentioned statement before the Inclosure Committee ; 
 and a precisely similar remark on the relative lowness 
 of the price of wheat is found in the "Compendious 
 Dialogue " to which we have just alluded. If the 
 wheat produce had been actually supplanted by a pure 
 grass husbandry, this moderate price of corn appears 
 very surprising. Two agricultural authors of the 
 sixteenth century, however, give us more accurate 
 information concerning the husbandry which then 
 appears to a great extent to have arisen in the place of 
 the village and three-field husbandry. In the year 
 1539 a small publication appeared, which was ascribed 
 to the renowned jurist, Fitzherbert, which has not only 
 gone through many editions, but has become the model 
 of a whole series of similar works. It is called " The 
 book of surveying," in which is to be found a formal 
 receipt for the agrarian changes which are advan- 
 tageous on a manor. Not only does he lay great stress 
 
 G 
 
82 Oy THE AGRIGVLTVRAL COMMUNITY 
 
 on the point that it is desirable to separate the manor 
 land from the agrariarn community in which it was 
 often husbanded with the tenants' lands, because it 
 would gain much in value as a separate inclosure 
 (chap. 2) ; but he has a whole chapter (40) on how a 
 township which is worth twenty marks a-year may be 
 made worth ^620 sterling: "Every village has now tlaree 
 fields for wheat tillage, one common pasture for horses, 
 one for the rest of the cattle, and a meadow." He 
 proposes that the proprietor of land in each of these 
 six portions of the acreage shall keep his property in 
 one connected plot, and that the old condition of 
 arable land in small parcels, the regulated community 
 of use, and the common pasture, shall cease. In this 
 manner each would possess six separate pieces of 
 land, which he might inclose, three out of former 
 arable land, and three out of grass land. But he 
 adds to this his advice, that whenever the arable land 
 may have become exhausted by wheat cultivation it 
 should be laid down in grass, and a corresponding 
 quantity of the inclosed pasture land should be broken 
 up for corn cultivation. Thus the manure of the 
 grazing cattle would be utilized for the arable land, 
 and "reist grounde" would be always there, which 
 would grow much com with little manure; with a 
 saving of shepherds' wages, and a gain of much wood 
 from the live hedges which separated the several 
 inclosures frohi one another, and which would afford 
 shelter to cattle from the weather by these fences, 
 &c. &c. Hence the recommendations did not point 
 towards a pure pasture, but, as it appears, to a rather 
 irregular field-grass husbandry. Some ten years later, 
 Tusser (in his Five hundred points of good hus- 
 bandry)^ describes still more plainly the field-grass 
 husbandry as the one prevailing on inclosed lands. 
 
 The book appeared for the first time in 1557, under the title of "A 
 hundreth good porntes of husbandry" ; and then in a number of new 
 editions, with additions and correctiong by the author, then called " Five 
 hundreth porntes of good husbandry"; the author used the edition of 
 \\ liliam Mavor, London, 1812. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 83 
 
 There is no publication which gives us a clearer 
 insight into the struggle between the two systems, in 
 which Tusser, as a rational farmer, takes a decided 
 part on the side of inclosures, and cries down in every 
 possible way the old village husbandry; it not only 
 deteriorated produce, but induced idleness, thieving, 
 &c. &c. In the districts in which it prevailed the 
 country population were much poorer than in those 
 where there were inclosures ; a poor man who pos- 
 sessed two acres of inclosed land, was much better off 
 than if he had twenty in an uninclosed state. ^ The 
 ordinary succession of crops on uninclosed land was, 
 according to Tusser, three-field husbandry, with field- 
 crop constraint, and common pasturage, ^ and also 
 
 ' Especially see chap. liii. A comparison between champion country 
 and severall. This comparison commences : — 
 
 "1. The country inclosed I praise, . 
 
 The t'other delighted not me, 
 
 For nothing the wealth it doth raise 
 
 To such as inferior he. 
 " 7. More plenty of mutton and heef, 
 
 Com, butter, and cheese of the best ; 
 
 More wealth anywhere to be brief. 
 
 More people, more handsome and prest, (?) 
 
 Where find ye, go search any coast 
 
 Than there, where inclosure is most. 
 " 8. More work for the labouring man 
 
 As well in the town as the field, etc. 
 (On the other hand) The champion robbeth by night, 
 
 And prowleth and filcheth by day, etc." 
 
 ' e.g. in October Abstract : — 
 
 " 23. Two crops and away 
 
 Most champion say — 
 " 25. What champion kiiows 
 
 That custom shows 
 " 26. First barley ere rye. 
 
 Then pease by and by, 
 
 Then fallow for wheat 
 
 Is husbandry great." 
 
 In a more detailed manner, with barley as a summer crop, chap, xviii. :— 
 
 " First rye and then barley, the champion says, 
 Or wheat before barley be champion ways ; 
 But drink before bread-corn with Middlesex men, 
 Then lay on more compass and fallow again." 
 " T' one taketh his season as commoners may. 
 The tother with reason may otherwise say." 
 
 g2 
 
84 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 exceptionally two-field liusbandry ; on inclosed land, on 
 the other hand, he praises the freedom of choice 
 which rests with the landlord, and mentions a succes- 
 sion of crops, for a considerable time, fallow, oats, 
 peas, and wheat, and then either fallow again or 
 laying down in pasture and a lengthened grass employ- 
 ment (October's Husbandry, ch. xviii. v. 22). In 
 whatever manner the succession of crops may have 
 been managed on inclosed lands, according to him, 
 as a general rule, the ground which had been ex- 
 hausted by wheat crops was obliged to be laid down 
 in grass (January's Husbandry, ch. xxiii. v. 52). 
 Concerning the duration of the pasture years, indeed, 
 we learn nothing. Thus, the question here is not that 
 the inclosing and dissolution of village husbandry is 
 identical with the introduction of a pure pasture hus- 
 bandry; on the contrary, according to this author, 
 tillage was the rule on inclosed lands, and the conver- 
 sion of arable land into pasture was merely temporary, 
 which indeed is a peculiarity of field-grass husbandry. 
 We may mention here, incidentally, that Tusser de- 
 scribes Suffolk and Essex as counties which are almost 
 wholly inclosed ; while the common village husbandry 
 prevails in Leicester, Norfolk, and Cambridge, With 
 the exception of Essex, W. S. describes the counties 
 of Kent and Northampton as those in which the land 
 is most inclosed. 
 
 It is very plain that such an agricultural system, es- 
 pecially when it sprung up under the then prevaihng 
 state of affairs in England, must have obtained a decisive 
 preponderance over that which had been in use up to 
 that time. The fundamental principle of field-grass hus- 
 bandry is the combination and reciprocal operation of 
 corn cultivation and cattle breeding on a large scale, 
 and which is realized in the highest degree by means 
 of a husbandry which employs a succession of crops ; 
 and the results, at the beginning of this centurj', first 
 turned the attention of judicious German farmers to 
 England and the Norfolk four crops. The change from 
 corn cultivation to cattle grazing on the same land is 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 85 
 
 alike advantageous to the production of the grain and 
 the rearing of the cattle. The grass crops on the 
 parcels which are from time to time ploughed up and 
 manured, especially when the preliminary climatic con- 
 ditions of this husbandry exist, are much stronger and 
 of a better quality than those on the constant pasture 
 of the three-field husbandry. In the first pasture years 
 hay-harvesting was frequently practised, which gave a 
 better supply of winter food for the cattle. If, then, 
 the pasture after a time of free grazing should have 
 deteriorated, a fallow year followed, with a deep and 
 repeated ploughing, and the returns of the wheat 
 harvest on such land was much richer than had ever 
 been obtained by a three-field husbandry. For, as we 
 have already remarked, according to Fitzherbert, in a 
 three-field husbandry the manure of the cattle was 
 spread on the common pasture, while under the 
 inclosed system it came to the benefit of the land 
 which, at a later period, had to be broken up for 
 tillage. In the fallow year the decaying grass seed 
 enriched the arable land, and the stall manure was 
 more copious on account of the improved winter 
 feeding. On the contrary, in a common three-field 
 husbandry, regular cattle breeding was scarcely possible. 
 On the arable land grain cultivation was the rule, the 
 common pastures were neglected and poor. Above all, 
 a scarcity of winter fodder was in the highest_ degree 
 prevalent. For this reason the meadows suited for 
 hay-growing had a disproportionately high value, and 
 yet from insufficient manure often afforded merely a 
 scanty produce. Since winter fodder was so dear the 
 cattle were left upon the pasture, even when it could 
 only afford the most precarious nourishment, which, 
 with straw food, hardly sustained them through the 
 
 winter. 
 
 In Germany the opinion is now (since the researches 
 of Thiinen) that the regulated field-grass husbandry 
 was a much more productive system than the three- 
 field, and therefore it was only possible to make the 
 transition from one to the other when the produce of the 
 
86 ON TEE AGBIOULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 land was at a high price. But the researches of 
 Thiinen related to the husbandry of Mecklenburg as it 
 existed m his time. It is rather an essential property 
 of field-grass husbandry that it can assume with ease 
 different grades of productiveness. By lengthening 
 the pasture time, and thereby the time of the whole 
 successions of crops, the cost of cultivation can be 
 lessened at pleasure. The surface of the fallow which 
 is to be ploughed, and the fields which are to be cul- 
 tivated each season, in relation to the whole, and also 
 the amount of labour and capital which is thereby 
 expended on a given extent of land, must be indeed 
 smaller, the more the grass or pasture years are pro- 
 longed. Hence it was not necessary that the prices of 
 production should rise to a certain height in relation 
 to the cost of cultivation in order to make the transi- 
 tion to field-grass husbandi-y appear advantageous. 
 
 There are, however, two circumstances with which 
 such a transition is conditioned. First, the climate 
 must be favourable to grass groAvth, which requires con- 
 siderable atmospheric moisture, and it is only under 
 such conditions that after several wheat crops the 
 ground can be immediately laid down with profit for 
 grass culture. "Where these conditions are wanting, 
 so long as no herbage or clover cultivation is present, 
 the constant partition of arable land and pasture, 
 where it has once existed, will be retained. In Ger- 
 many, therefore, the principal lands which have been 
 used for field-grass husbandry are coastlands, such as 
 Holstein and Mecklenburg ; or mountain districts with 
 a considerable watershed. But the above requirements 
 are exactly fulfilled in the sea-climate of England, so 
 that it is not easy to explain how a three-field hus- 
 bandry could have been so long pursued instead of a 
 field system so especially indicated by the local con- 
 ditions. For these reasons it appears to us to be pro- 
 bable that the system of a permanent separation of 
 pasture and arable land was imported by a people 
 whose former place of residence had a continental 
 climate, and the Anglo-Saxons are immediately sug- 
 
OF TEE MIDDLE AOEH. 87 
 
 gested to us. The movement, then, of the sixteenth 
 century was merely a return to the natural agricultural 
 condition of the country. 
 
 A second momentum, which perhaps is not always 
 an indispensable condition of the field-grass husbandry, 
 but which may always' be designated as especially ad- 
 vantageous in a lower degree of culture, is a favourable 
 condition for the sale of the produce of the cattle 
 breeding in comparison with the demand for corn. 
 With a dense population and high prices of all agri- 
 cultural produce, cattle breeding on a large scale, 
 which is connected with this husbandry system, can be 
 made to pay on account of its favourable retroaction 
 on corn culture ; but with a more extensive husbandry, 
 and a low price of the produce of the soil, this expen- 
 sive way of raising the corn crop will never appear 
 advantageous. In such a case it will be always better 
 to cultivate larger surfaces with corn (with a light 
 manuring) than indirectly to raise the produce by 
 fodder cultivation, cattle breeding, and thick manuring 
 of a smaller extent of ground. The field-grass hus- 
 bandry, in which indeed the number of pasture years 
 is proportionately great, under such circumstances (if 
 the product of the cattle breeding cannot in itself be 
 made a remunerative object), will occasion the parts of 
 the farm which are not under corn cultivation to 
 remain for the most part unused, and thus they will 
 lose their principal prerogative in the three-field 
 husbandry. 
 
 In this respect the circumstances of the times of the 
 transition were especially favourable. 
 
 At the end of the Middle Ages, and above all, in the 
 sixteenth century, a money economy (the proportionately 
 early introduction of which into England we have 
 already alluded to) made most rapid progress. The 
 division of employment between town and country was 
 at this time already supplanted, in a measure, by an 
 international division of employment. The small 
 towns, whose industrial produce had hitherto been con- 
 sumed by the country, which gave back its surplus of 
 
88 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 agricultural produce in return, began to fall into decay; 
 and in all which related to an interchange of com- 
 naodities for the country population the great seats of 
 foreign trade and industry took their place. It occurs 
 in the above-mentioned dialogue (fol. 47, 48), " that, 
 what was formerly produced in the country towns, 
 every one now obtains from London or from foreign 
 countries; and this state of things is lamented, as well as 
 the prevalent consumption of foreign produce, the decay 
 of the old corporate towns, and the enormous growth 
 of London in many old publications of the time; 
 phenomena which also then excited the grave con- 
 sideration of the legislature." ^ But the more foreign 
 wares were in use, so much the more naturally must 
 the demand be increased for inland produce to be sold 
 in foreign parts, and hence in the sixteenth century, 
 as well as almost throughout the Middle Ages, 
 wool, first more in a rough, and later more in a 
 manufactured state, was by far the most important 
 article of export in England. Tin and lead also, 
 skins, hides, and leather, beer and cheese are men- 
 tioned as articles of export about this time ; which 
 are partly also the produce of cattle breediag, but 
 all these put together, with perhaps the exception 
 of tin, were of minor importance when compared with 
 wool and woollen fabrics. Their production must also 
 have been much increased as foreign articles became 
 more and more objects of luxury, and their price must 
 have been raised by the demand for the produce of 
 French and Italian industry, for foreign iron and wine, 
 spices and pigments. To this, another circumstance 
 
 ' See on the decay of the corporate towns in the Statute-hook, introcluc- 
 tion to 3 Henry VIII. c. 8, and Eden, " State of the Poor," I. pp. 109, 110. 
 Eden ascribes the bad condition of the small towns to another circum- 
 stance, -which certainly co-operated thereto — he means the exclusive privi- 
 leges of the guilds — the ancient towns had already depressed the rapidly 
 increasing industry of the new districts which were not endowed with 
 municipal rights. In addition to the revival of London in that point of 
 view, that of Birmingham and Manchester is also very remarkable in that 
 century. On the rapid growth of London at that period see Macpherson's 
 "Annals of commerce," II. p. 166, 227. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 89 
 
 must be added which was favourable to the relative 
 increase m the price of wool. In the second half of 
 the sixteenth century the general rise in prices which 
 followed the discovery of sUver wealth in America prin- 
 cipally commenced, and reached the highest point in 
 Western Europe. In a country like England, when it 
 was affected by these fluctuations of prices, it must 
 first have had its influence on articles of export ; and 
 then, by degrees, the higher silver prices which were 
 offered in the international trade for exports must also 
 have had an influence on the price of the remaining 
 wares and services. During the whole time of the 
 transition, the increased quantity of silver which was 
 got for the articles of export, operated as a premium 
 on their production in comparison with such wares for 
 which at that time there was no foreign demand, such 
 as for wheat.^ Never, remarks J. Smith, had the English 
 wool trade risen to a greater height than in the time from 
 Edward YI. to the death of Queen Elizabeth,^ and hence 
 the frequent complaints, which have been already re- 
 ferred to, of the dearness of wool and the cheapness of 
 corn, which W. S. proposed to counteract by prohibit- 
 ing the export of wool and allowing freedom to that of 
 corn, which up to that time, as a rule, had been pro- 
 hibited. Unfortunately, we must renounce the wish 
 of following statistically these fluctuations in prices. 
 -The statements concerning the prices of wool which we 
 were enabled to collect were too imperfect, and espe- 
 cially too inaccurate, to allow of any certain conclusions 
 being drawn from them. It is to be hoped that the 
 continuation of the history of prices by Eogers will 
 soon offer trustworthy materials, from the registers of 
 the Oxford Colleges, more reliable than that already 
 treated of, for the period of- the fourteenth century, in 
 which the price of wool, in its relation to the estima- 
 tion of prices, can be very little depended upon, on 
 
 ' See HeKerich on the periodical variation in the value of the precious 
 metals. Nuremburg, 1843, p. 90. 
 
 ' Chronicon Kusticum Commerciale, or Memoirs of Wool, by John 
 Smith, 1 vol., London, 1747, p. 137. 
 
90 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 account of the exceeding difference in the weight 
 of the "petra,"^ according to which wool was com- 
 monly sold. 
 
 Since, in the three-field husbandry, there was no 
 room for such a tendency to farm by means of cattle 
 breeding, it was necessary to have recourse rather to 
 the field-grass, or on occasions to pure-grass husbandry, 
 and thus the common village husbandry in its old 
 form, could not possibly adapt itself to the new con- 
 ditions. In other places, it is true, there were- villages 
 with a common field-grass husbandry, as, for example, 
 in Holstein ; and it is with justice that Hansseh has 
 latterly denounced the very frequent identification of vil- 
 lage and three-field husbandry. But, in order to accom- 
 plish such a transition, a complete exchange of all the 
 plots of ground, and a new partitioning of both the 
 arable land and pasture, would have been necessary, and 
 if such a new division of the acreage had been attempted, 
 most certainly the large landed proprietors would have 
 succeeded in establishing a contemporaneous abolition 
 of the constraint as to a succession of crops, and the 
 complete conversion of all the possessions into private 
 property. We have already seen how their efforts were 
 made in this direction even in the Middle Ages. In- 
 closures, indeed, according to the manner in which we 
 make them in modern times, were desirable, and in 
 this light they were commended in a just point of 
 view, as well by Fitzherbert as by W. S. But the im- 
 mense difficulty of such a measure, without any fixed 
 legislative enactments, must speak for itself,^ and this 
 
 ' The " petra," our stone, was a weight among the Anglo-Saxons, the 
 value of which, vaguely estimated, was about 14lb. Then, as now, it 
 varied for different wares —meat, 8lb. ; glass, 51b.; cheese, 161b.; hemp, 
 32lb. There can be little doubt that in rude ages, as is the case now in 
 India, a round stone was made use of instead of a regular weight, hence the 
 name. — H. A. 0. 
 
 ° In fact, the Legislature of those times did interfere in the partitioning 
 of the land, wliich was then in a state of veritable community and copartner- 
 ship. The law, 31 Henry VIII. c. 1, and 32 Henry VIII. c. 32, enacts that 
 joint-tenants, as well as tenants in common, can be bound by a writ "de 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 91 
 
 was without doubt the reason that in so many" places in 
 Europe the village and three-field husbandry was pre- 
 served so completely unchanged from century to cen- 
 tury. But in England there was this addition — viz. 
 that the lords of the manor would not have been 
 inclined to allow of a division of the pasturage, which 
 they looked upon as their own property, but rather the 
 enfranchizing the same from the pasturage rights must 
 have appeared to them the object to be aimed at. As, 
 for these reasons, a general new partitioning of the 
 land could only be accomplished in exceptional cases, 
 there remained feasible but the formation of the larger 
 landed properties, and the separation of them from the 
 village community (which, as We have already men- 
 tioned, commenced in the Middle Ages), as a means of 
 carrying out a system of husbandry which corresponded 
 to the climatic and mercantile conditions.^ 
 
 But when once any change in a system is indicated 
 by the very nature of the circumstances, then neither 
 the power of ancient custom nor respect for vested 
 rights can long oppose any resistance. 
 
 It is still very remarkable how the supplanting of so 
 many small landed proprietors just then took place, 
 and this after that class among them that stood in the 
 most unfavourable position in a legal point of view 
 had obtained a protection at law for their rights of pro- 
 perty. In spite of this, these copyholders were driven 
 
 partitione facienda," to he. devised in the Chancery for the partitioning of 
 the common property. But in all the cases in which the rights of the lords 
 of the soil was opposed to the pasture rights of the common, this law did 
 not apply. ' 
 
 ' The close connection which arose in England between the introduc- 
 tion of the field-grass husbandry and the supplanting the small landed 
 Proprietor, also showed itself in a precisely similar manner in the agrarian 
 istory of Mecklenburg. Up to the commencement of the eighteenth 
 century there the intermixed manor and peasant lands were husbanded by 
 a three-field husbandry in common ; but the introduction of the Holstein 
 system of laying out the farms in parcels then gave rise to the supplanting 
 of the peasants on an extreme scale. Vide on this subject " Agriculture and 
 the Peasant" in the History of Mecklenburg, by Ernst Boll, Neubrandenburg, 
 1856 3 vols. p. 463, et seq. (Die Bauem und die Landwirthschaft in der 
 Gesohichte Mecklenburgs.) 
 
92 OX THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 in great numbers from their rural Mdes. ^ When 
 an extraordinary Eoyal Commission like that of the 
 Protector, ordered to inquire into illegal inclosures 
 and the eviction of peasants, could not prevail against 
 the ruling classes, it is very easy to conceive that 
 .the protection of the High Courts of Judicature or the 
 judges in their circuits could afford little help to the 
 poor small peasant. His rights rested on the custom 
 of the manor, which was to be proved from the manor 
 roll, in the possession of the lord of the manor ; and a 
 copyholder could lose these rights by numerous acts, 
 by which he failed in his obligations towards the lord,- 
 or even by acting otherwise than in unison with rights 
 estabhshed by custom of the manors. The small 
 copyholders were not in a position to establish such 
 rights before juristic tribunals and experienced advo- 
 cates. Latymer, on this account, accuses the judges 
 even, of injustice and corruption (being open to bribes) 
 and maintains that, "in these days gold is all- 
 powerful with the tribunals." Certainly, also, a time 
 like that under the rule of Henry VIII. and the 
 following years, while so gi-eat a revolution in Church 
 and State was in progress, could not have been favour- 
 able for the support of circumstances dependent upon 
 custom. A change so sudden as the secularization of 
 the monastery properties, and which appeared to the 
 
 ' Here and there certainly there is a question of buying up the small 
 plots of land. Vide, e.g. a contemporaneous poem on unsatiable purchasers 
 by Strype, Memor. I. 133. 
 
 This poem is as follows : 
 
 " An xmreasonabJe rich man dyd lyd by the way 
 Who for lack of men hadd with him a boy, 
 And as he past by a pasture most pleasant to see ; 
 Of late I have purchased this ground, Jack, qiiothe he ; 
 Mary, maister, quod the boy, men say over al, 
 That your purchase is great, but your household is smal. 
 W^hy, Jack, quod thys riche man, what have they to do 1 
 Would they Ixave me to purchase, and keep great house too ? 
 I cannot tell, qu^od the boy, what maketh them to brawle, 
 But they say that you purchase the DevU, his dam, and aU." 
 
 Strtpe. 
 H. A. O. 
 
OF TEE MIDDLE AGES. 93 
 
 mass of the population to be so unjust, must have 
 shaken the respect of the rural population for all 
 traditional rules relative to property. Thus, a pub- 
 hcation which appeared in the year 1546 complains 
 that the new possessors of church property generally 
 declared that, by the secularization, all the old rights 
 of property of the copyholders were extinguished. The 
 possessors, according to the law of the custom of the 
 manor, were obliged either to give up their holdings, 
 or to retain them on temporary leases. I The modern 
 agriculture commencing at that time tended without 
 doubt greatly towards a state of pure leasing instead 
 of the mediaeval relations between the lord of the 
 soil and the farmer, as well as to a dissolution of 
 the agrarian community ; and the legislature came 
 powerfully to the aid of these innovations. By 
 21 Henry VIII. c. 15, leases-, although not in writing, 
 obtained a legal value ; and 32 Henry VIII. c. 28 
 (enabling statute) also conferred permission to the 
 tenant-in-tail to conclude leases for a lengthened 
 period. ^ 
 
 It is no part of our task here to follow these move- 
 ments beyond the sixteenth century ; but this much is 
 certain, that however powerfully they showed them- 
 selves in that time, they only attained their object to a 
 limited extent. The official reports concerning the 
 duration of the agrarian community up to this century 
 has been already referred to, and also that the smaller 
 landed proprietors had in no wise completely disap- 
 peared in the sixteenth century. The freeholders had 
 for the most part maintained their holdings, and the 
 copyholders had not nearly all been supplanted, or 
 converted into leaseholders. Still, in the beginning of 
 the seventeenth century. Coke could say in a well-known 
 
 ' A supplication of tte poor commoners to the king, given in Strype, 
 vol. i. p. 398, et seq. 
 ■' Reeves, 1. cit. vol. iv. p. 232, et seq. 
 
94 OX THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 judgment, that the third part of England consisted of 
 copyhold. But the revolution which then began has 
 continued even into our times. Its progress has been 
 sometimes quicker, sometimes slower, and gradually 
 the connection which there was at the commencement 
 between the two phenomena — inclosures and peasant 
 eviction — has been less close ; but still it remains 
 unmistakeable, that among the many circumstances 
 which have caused the complete disappearance of the 
 mediseval peasant class, the first and most important 
 was the dissolution of the old communities in land. 
 A transmutation of the agricultural association, instead 
 of its abrogation, would have placed the small pro- 
 prietor in a position to adopt the same mode of pro- 
 ceeding as the larger proprietors, and given him a 
 position in the community, against the economic and 
 social power of the great lords of the soil. Also a 
 thorough consolidation and new partitioning of the 
 acreage, with an establishment of separate husbandry, 
 would have been more favourable than the course which 
 the reform took, and long adhered to. For, a simul- 
 taneous separation of all establishments would at least 
 have had the advantage of making independent, and col- 
 lecting into one, both the small and the larger properties. 
 But as, in the first place, none of these expedients 
 were adopted, and as the Inclosure Acts, which issued 
 at a later period, for the partitioning of individual 
 communities, were generally unfavourable to the small 
 properties,^ and besides, as the enormous law expenses 
 fell much more heavily on the smaller landed properties 
 
 ' Lord Lincoln, on making his motion concerning the inclosures of com- 
 mons, said of these Inclosure Acts, " This I know, that in nineteen cases out 
 of twenty, conmiittees sitting in this House on private hills neglected the 
 rights of the poor. I do not say that they wilfully neglected those rights — 
 far from it ; but this I affirm, that they were neglected in consequence of the 
 committees being permitted to remain in ignorance of the rights of the poor 
 man, because by reason of his very poverty he is imable to come up to 
 London to fee counsel, to procure witnesses, and to urge his claims before a 
 committee of this House."—" Hansard," 1 May, 1845. 
 
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 95 
 
 than on the larger, it is not to he wondered at that when, 
 in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the large 
 fortunes acquired hy trade were sought to be invested 
 in land and soil, and the purchasers were contented to 
 receive the smallest interest for their investments, the 
 remainder of the small landed proprietors sold their 
 hereditary possessions; part of them invested their 
 capital to more advantage in trade or as farmers, 
 and part pursued agriculture under more favourable 
 •conditions, beyond the sea, on their own ground and 
 soil. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 Fenus agitare, et in usuras extendere, ignotum : 
 ideoque magis servatur quam si vetitum esset, Agri pro 
 numero cultorem, ab universis per vices occupantur, quos 
 mox inter se secundum dignationem partiuntur : facili- 
 tatem partiendi camporum spatia praestant. 
 
 Arva per annos mutant ; et superest ager : nee enim 
 cum ubertate et amplitudine soli labpre contendunt, ut 
 pomaria conserunt, et prata separent, et hortos rigent : 
 sola terrae seges imperatur. 
 
 Unde annum quoque ipsum non in totidem degerunt 
 species : Hems, et ver, et sestas intellectum ac vocabula 
 habent : autumni perinde nomen ac bona ignorantur. — 
 Tacitus XXVI. Germania. 
 
 Pro numero cultorum — per vices. 
 
 It is only by fresh divisions tbat land, once appor- 
 tioned among a certain number of cultivators, can remain 
 in any permanent relation to the number of those 
 cultivators. 
 
 Again : it is only by an increase of either land, or 
 the product of land, proportionate to the increase of the 
 population, that the respective competences of the culti- 
 vators can remain the same. 
 
 Hence the words "pro numero cultorum" create a 
 difficulty which is enhanced by the words " per vices." 
 
 Mox : This is the most difficult word of the section. 
 "Per vices" implies change from one set of holders to 
 another ; and " mox — ^partiuntur" does more. It denotes 
 a change from a system of periodical transfer to one of 
 permanent appropriation. 
 
 First comes a season when land shifts from owner to 
 owner; next, one wherein it passes to a permanent state 
 of an individual or joint property. 
 
 H 
 
98 APPENDIX. 
 
 Agri : This I think had a double importance according 
 to its relation. 
 
 a. As opposed to " arva" it means land in grass, 
 wood, or fen, in contradistinction to land under the 
 plough. 
 
 6. As opposed to land which had been divided and 
 apportioned, it means unapportioned or undivided. 
 
 Agri pro numero, &c. : The proper commentator on 
 this difficult section is some conveyancer learned ia 
 ethnology, rather than a simple ethnologist. 
 
 The separate words, however, must be first considered. 
 
 Arva : Arable land. 
 
 Per annos : Annually ; every year. 
 
 Mutant : From a crop to fallow ; not from one holder 
 to another. 
 
 Superest : Stands over to spare ; is abundant — as, ne 
 ferrum quidem superest (§ 6 = There is no excess even 
 of iron). 
 
 Sola — seges : Corn (wheat and barley, § 23) to the 
 exclusion of green crops, pulse, and vegetables. 
 
 Hiems, et ver, et sestas : Winter, spring (for — aar 
 Danish, fruhjahr German ^= for year), and summer. 
 Such are the only Germanic names of the seasons, even 
 in the present English ; autumn being of Latin origiu. 
 Fall (in America), back-end (in more than one provincial 
 dialect), and harvest, are all — though of native origin — 
 recent terms. 
 
 I cannot realize the nature of the tenure here noticed. 
 The limited tenure expressed by "per vices" cannot 
 weU have consisted in a certain allotment as private 
 property accompanied by a certain share in an individual 
 common, though such has been the view of careful 
 writers. 
 
 The word " mox" complicates this view. For the 
 occupation, ia the first instance (pro numero cultorum, 
 ab universis per vices), we find no trace of individual 
 possession ; for that is the second (partitio secundum 
 dignitatum), none of joint ownership. Yet "mox" 
 implies that the two forms were successive rather than 
 simultaneous. 
 
APPENDIX. 99 
 
 That there was much joint occupancy, except on the 
 Marches, I am slow to believe. The house, at least, was 
 permanent. So must the farms occupied by the " servi" 
 of § 25 have been. The whole tenor of German history 
 goes the same way. 
 
 It is safe, then, to hold with Mr. Kemble, that when 
 the Germans " changed the arable year to year, there was 
 land to spare," that is, for commons "and pasture"; but 
 it does not amount to a proof that settled property in 
 land was not part of the Teutonic scheme ; it implies no 
 more than this, that within the Mark which was the 
 property of all, what was this year one man's corn-land 
 might the next be another man's fallow ; a process very 
 intelligible to those who know anything of the system of 
 cultivation ; yet prevalent in parts of Germany or have 
 ever had interest in what we call Lammas meadows. 
 
 This even seems too much — to say nothing about the 
 difi&culty attached to the words " another man's fallow." 
 What could such a fallow be 1 Not for corn ; since the 
 land had been cropped by the previous owner. Not for 
 a green crop ; since there were none such known. Nor 
 for the herbage, i.e. the weeds and after-growth of the 
 harvest, which in some parts of England is worth from 
 two to three shillings an acre. The harvests of Germany 
 are too late for this. 
 
 I think that the sentence of Tacitus has so little to do 
 with the tenure of the land at aU, that it must be taken 
 with what follows, rather than with what precedes, in 
 which case it applies to husbandry only — not to the laws 
 of landed property. 
 
 Nothing but corn was grown. This was new to an 
 Italian : who had seen vetches, flax and so many other 
 products taken off the same land in either succession or 
 rotation. As a consequence of -this. : 
 
 There was no such thing as a second crop on the same 
 land without an interval. 
 
 This was also new to an Italian. The abundance of. 
 land, however, allows it. 
 
 As far, then, as the present passage goes, the arvum 
 which has just borne a crop, although left to nature, is as 
 
100 APPENDIX. 
 
 much the property of the original owner, in the interval 
 between two tUths, as it was during the seed-time and 
 harvest. 
 
 The difficulties connected with the tenure of land it 
 neither removes nor increases. 
 
 By considering the statement as one for which Caesar 
 rather than Tacitus is responsible, and limiting the 
 account in Caesar to the occupancy of the lands of the 
 Sequani, dispossessed by Ariovistus, we approach a 
 solution. 
 
 We are, then, at liberty to consider an occupation 
 which is at one and the same time imperfect, and tem- 
 porary in the light of abnormal tenure, adapted to the 
 country of a conquered enemy only. Yet even then, the 
 details are remarkable. Was the occupatio "per vices" 
 mere quartering of successive bodies of warriors (warriors 
 only) upon recently invaded and imperfectly subdued 
 districts, and the subsequent partitio the distribution of 
 the land of such districte after the conquest had become 
 complete, the possession asstired, and the conversion of 
 chieftains and captains into comparatively peaceable 
 settlers had become practicable ? Such a view would 
 best reconcile Caesar's statement with probability. — 
 Latham. — H. A. 0. 
 
 Page 10.. The passage in Marshall's pamphlet is as 
 follows : — • 
 
 " Each parish and township (at least in the more central 
 and northern districts) comprised different descriptions 
 of land, having been subjected during successive ages to 
 specified modes of occupancy under ancient and strict 
 regulations which time had converted into law. These 
 parochial arrangements, however, varied somewhat in the 
 different districts, but in the more central, and greater 
 part of the kingdom, not widely." 
 
 Printed by E. Baekett & Sons, 13, Mark Lane, Loudon, E.G.