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 uos ANGELES 
 LIBRARY 
 
 K
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 ON 
 
 ^j\n |.griniltuni( Communitn 
 
 OP 
 
 THE MIDDLE AGES, 
 
 AND 
 
 mCLOSUEES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 
 
 IN 
 
 ENGLAND. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN OF 
 
 E. NASS.E, 
 By Colonel H. A. Ouvry (late 9th Lancers). 
 
 " In der Beherrschung der Erde liegt die Kraft des Mannes und des Staates : 
 die Grosse Roms ist gebaut auf die ausgedehnteste und unmittelbarste Herrschafb 
 der Burger iiber den Boden und auf die gesclilossene Einlieit dicser also fcstge- 
 griindeten Bauerscbaft." — Mommsen, 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COYENT GARDEN, LONDON; 
 
 AND 
 
 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 1872. 
 
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 TEAE^SLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The extract from a speech of Ricbarcl Cobdeii, 
 which appeared as a Preface to the First Edition of 
 this work, has been omitted in the present issue, 
 as it might be supposed to stamp with a poUtical 
 
 ^ character that which is merely an academical essay. 
 
 H 
 
 H. A. OUVKY. 
 
 29, Hyde Park Place, 
 
 January 1st, 1872.
 
 1' R E 1' A C E . 
 
 The translation of this work, wiiich was published 
 under the distinguished sanction of the Cobdcn Club 
 by Colonel H. A. Ouvry, C.B., having now reached a 
 second edition, a few explanatory words from the 
 author may not seem out of place. 
 
 The original treatise was published in 1869, as one 
 of those academical essays which are distributed 
 annually to the Members of this University before 
 the 3rd of August, the anniversary of the day on 
 which the University was founded in 1818. These 
 essays are intended to contain the results of purely 
 scientific researches. Until lately they were written 
 in Latin, and the present one happened to be the 
 first at Bonn which was printed in German. A 
 number of copies of these essays are placed at the 
 disposal of the author for distribution to his colleagues 
 at other Universities, and to other persons who are 
 supposed to take a special interest in the subject. 
 A few copies are occasionally sent to a bookseller 
 for sale. 
 
 The writer of such an essay thus enjoys the pri- 
 vilege of addressing himself solely to those who have
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 a thorough knowledge of the subject, and who are 
 conversant with the results of previous researches in 
 the same field. 
 
 My reason for publishing the present treatise in this 
 form was, that I did not consider myself sufficiently 
 advanced in the study of the subject to enable me to 
 write a complete history of the great changes in the 
 condition of landed property in England and in its 
 system of husbandry, which took place in the Middle 
 Ages and in the sixteenth century. When I published 
 the results of my enquiries into a portion of that im- 
 portant movement, I w^as far from expecting that my 
 treatise would interest the general public either of 
 G-ermany or of England. My sole object was to call 
 the attention of the learned to a subject which had 
 been only too much neglected, and thereby endeavour 
 to secure their aid towards further and more complete 
 investigations. 
 
 Such was the origin of my book ; and should some 
 parts of it appear unsatisfactory reading to those who 
 have not made the history of agrarian matters their 
 special study, I must plead as an excuse the circum- 
 stances under which it was written. 
 
 The translation of a work of this kind naturally 
 presented many difficulties. I have done my best to 
 explain to the translator the more difficult passages 
 and the technical expressions employed in the treatise. 
 But it appears to me that certain terms are wanting 
 in modern English for ancient agrarian rights and 
 customs and for practices of husbandry, which abound
 
 PREFACE. vii 
 
 in the German language. That state of things which 
 required those terms and expressions has endured to 
 a comparatively recent period in Germany, and many 
 German writers have paid marked attention to the 
 subject, while, in most parts of England, common 
 fields and the practice of co-operative husbandry liave 
 long since been almost entirely forgotten. Besides 
 this, I must repeat that the original treatise was not 
 intended to give either a popular or a complete repre- 
 sentation of the subject. 
 
 I am much gratified by the interest which it seems 
 to have excited in England, and I trust that in all 
 essential points the translation will carry to the reader 
 a correct impression of my views and of the results of 
 my researches ; but, considering the great importance 
 which at the present time attaches itself to some of 
 the questions involved, I think it right to state that 
 the responsibility of a correct translation of this 
 treatise rests entirely wdth the translator. 
 
 E. NASSE. 
 
 University of Bonn, 
 
 18th November, 1871.
 
 ON THE 
 
 AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 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, and 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 inquired into 
 all other parts of the history 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 the agrarian and agricultural relations 
 of the country. If then a stranger, instigated by the 
 historical importance of the question, has been niduced 
 to undertake the inquiry, he may perhaps obtam some 
 
 B
 
 2 ON THE AGRTVIJLTUIIAL COMMUNITY 
 
 indulgence should lie 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. 
 
 Remains 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 VVilhelm Maurer writes in the ZeitscJmft fur Deutsches Recht, 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 larger 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 AG EH. 3 
 
 this remnant of an ancient land community which has 
 been handed down to us, clears the way to an easier 
 comprehension of the authentic mediaeval 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 holdintrs. 
 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 wliich 
 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 professional experts who were examined before 
 the Committee in 1844 agreed in their information 
 that in many parts of the country plots of arable land 
 
 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 lauds of the present isolated farms. 
 
 He who travels in the marshes of North-AVest Germany, and continually 
 finds only small shopkeepers, artificers, and day Labourers living togotlier, 
 while the farmers inhabit isohited farms here and there outside the villages, 
 deceives himself, if he supposes that the latter kind of settlement was the 
 original one. It 1ms been the case for ceuturies that farmhouses have 
 been built outside the villages on the lands brought together by exchange 
 or purchase, and this still continues. 
 
 ' 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. 
 
 2 Our knowledge of the remains of medieval agricultural administration 
 Avould' be much extended if we had at our disposition the nuiteiials 
 collected in the archives of the Inclosure Commission instituted for the 
 dissolution of the community in common holdings. 
 
 b2
 
 4 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 in the same township lay intermixed and miinclosed, 
 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 (Dorfflur). 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 
 festival "Petri ad vincula," on the 1st of August — or, 
 according to the old calendar by which the reckoning 
 was then taken, the 13th August — which was the period 
 at which the common rights of pasture commenced. 
 But there was, however, a difference in this right, 
 inasmuch as in some places it vvas only the pos- 
 sessors of the land which lay intermixed in arable plots, 
 and in others, other classes also of the population who 
 had the right to fallow and stubble pasturage ; * for 
 instance, all householders and burghers of the town. 
 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 exercised 
 it for a length of time. (N. 300.) The source of the 
 rights of this last class 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 
 burghers 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 {jlurzwancf), and 
 
 ' George Wingrove Cooke, on Inclosures and Rights of Commons, 4th 
 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 authors pay no attention 
 whatever to the commonable lands. 
 
 ' Report on Inclosures, No. 4352, and Wingrove Cooke, I.e. 48. 
 
 ^ Flurzwang, i.e. compulsory cultivation with regard to rotation of crops.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 5 
 
 in most of the midland counties, almost without exce])- 
 tion, the old three-field hushandiy — generally, 1st, 
 wheat, 2nd, oats or heans, 3rd, fallow. (N. 1422 and 
 3360.) Exceptionally there appear also to have been 
 manorial properties, on which the arable land was free 
 from the compulsory rule as to a rotation of cro[)s, 
 but on which the common right to fallow and stnbl)]e 
 pasture remained, which certainly restrained the free- 
 dom of the cultivator nearly as much as if the 
 usual course had held good. (N. 5151, 5155.) On 
 very numerous meadow^s the same mode of cultiva- 
 tion prevailed ; the possessors farmed their })arcels 
 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 pasture. The permanent pasturage 
 as unpartitioned common land, w^as 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 pasture, the actual property being 
 vested in the lord of the manor, a condition that will be 
 fully investigated 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 lirst culti- 
 vated, and on the best kinds of soil. (N. 185, 186.) 
 
 More precise reports on the community in land, and 
 especially on the three-field husbandry in different parts 
 of England, are given in the before-mentioned descrip- 
 tion of the counties, which were published and issued 
 by the Board of Agricuhure. In nearly all parts of the 
 country, particularly in the midland and eastern 
 counties, but also in the west, for instance in Wiltshn-e, 
 and in the south, as in Surrey, and in the north, as m 
 Yorkshire, extensive open and common fields were to 
 be found. In Northamptonshire, out of 817 parishes,
 
 6 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 89 were in this condition ;^ in Oxfordshire, over 100 f 
 in Warwickshire, some 50,000 acres f in Berkshire, 
 half the county ;^ 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 com- 
 mon regulated rights of use), and common pasturage. 
 Sometimes might be added a fourth part, a smaller 
 inclosed portion of the common land excepted from the 
 compulsory cultivation, in the vicinity of the home- 
 steads. 
 
 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 f 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 husbandry, 
 as it has been likewise reported that such a system 
 held good always in Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, par- 
 ticularly 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 Reports of the Board of Agriculture from the Midland 
 Department of England. By Mr. Marshall. York, 1815, p. 334. 
 
 =* Ibid. p. 485, I.e. 
 
 3 Ibid. p. 284, I.e. 
 
 * A Review, &c., from the Southern Department. York, 1817, p. 48. 
 
 * Ibid. p. 191, l.c. 
 
 ® General View of the Agriculture of Huntingdonshire. By H. Stone. 
 1793. 
 
 ' Marshall, Midland Department, p. 452. 
 
 « Ibid. p. 409, l.c. 
 
 ' Southern Department, p. 191. 
 
 "^ Midland Department, p. 452 ; Southern Department, p. 215. 
 
 " A Farmer's Tour through the East of England. London, 1771, p. 458.
 
 UF THE MIDDLE AGES. 7 
 
 isolated, however, is the declaration of the same writer 
 that in Suffolk there were commonable lands on wliicli 
 two years' fallow always succeeded to one wheat cro)).' 
 Of particular places only, it was reported that live 
 or six exhaustive crops followed one after anotliei- 
 without either fallow or manure, and then one fallow 
 year with a heavy manuring ; but it was impossil)ie 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 information concern- 
 ing the extraordinary intermixture of the arable plots 
 in all these places, 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 and above, never more 
 than two or fhree 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 farmers and small pro- 
 prietors in the village always dwelt together. The 
 description enlarges concerning this point with 
 regard to Northamptonshire, and this is written 
 by a Scotchman (/. 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 exists or had formerly existed; when, however, 
 the land was inclosed on being first taken into culti- 
 vation, as was the case in the west, there were dwelling- 
 
 ' View of the Agriculture of Suffolk. By Arthur Young. 17!M, p. 14.
 
 8 ON THE AORICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 houses and farm -buildings on the lands belonging to 
 the same.^ 
 
 In the descriptions of the counties we find repeatedly 
 that in the above-mentioned land communities, the 
 properties were for the most part small, a fact which 
 is of great importance for agrarian history. In Hunting- 
 donshire, for instance, in the inclosed parts of the 
 county, large farms were the rule, commanding a rent of 
 from £200 to £500 yearly ; in the region of the open 
 fields the farms bore commonly a rent of from £50 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 unin- 
 closed. In Oxfordshire, small properties were to be 
 found almost exclusively in the open fields. The 
 official reports of Buckinghamshire^ and Wiltshire^ are 
 especially interesting from this point of view. There, 
 the uninclosed commons were still divided into yards 
 of land, yardlands, the mediaeval virgake terra, 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, they were from twenty- eight to 
 forty acres of arable land with the corresponding right 
 of pasture. In Wiltshire the yearly value of these 
 small peasant properties varied from £18 to £25 ster- 
 ling ; 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 
 use. 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, 
 
 ' Marshall, Midland Department, pp. 334, 348, et seq. 
 
 "^ Ibid. p. 520, et seq. 
 
 ■■' Marshall, Southern Department, p. 203, et seq.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 9 
 
 which however gradually in the course of time became 
 couverted 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 still a considerable number 
 remained, and were separately farmed. These peasimt 
 properties originally made up the greatest part of the 
 manors to which they belonged ; there was only one 
 large farm on each property, the domain of the lord of 
 the manor, which, as a rule, lay separate from that of 
 the peasant. Williams, in the Archcvologia, vol. xxxiii. 
 p. 270, describes a perfectly similar constitution of a 
 manor in Oxfordshire, and traces it by records into the 
 sixteenth centurv. The manor consisted of sixtv-four 
 yardlands, of which the greater part had gradually 
 passed from the possession of the peasant to the private 
 use of the lord of the manor. To each yardland be- 
 longed a house and farmyard, twenty-four to twenty- 
 eight and three-quarter acres of arable land, a share in 
 the commonable 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 pasture. The relator 
 considers it likely that in ancient times, in addition, 
 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 
 a considerable part of England the old English ])ea- 
 santry,' as we still see them even in a measure in 
 
 » The use of the word (bauerschaft) here translated peasantry, must not 
 lead us to suppose that our present agricultural labourers are the class 
 meant.
 
 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 unin- 
 closed condition, and was more or less in a commonable 
 state. In the treatise^ in which he enters most fully 
 into these matters he gives as his opinion, that the 
 division and use of land in several parts of England 
 differed indeed somewhat, but in the central and 
 greater portion not widely. 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 necessary 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 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 like one great farm 
 which was made use of by the joint tenants according 
 
 ' On the Appropriation and Inclosm-e of Commonable and Intermixed 
 Lands, by Mr. Marshall, London, 1801, p. 1, et seq.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 11 
 
 to a uniform plan. 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 of 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 pas- 
 turage, and a fresh portion of the common pasture 
 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 irregular convertible hus- 
 bandry, nor the paring and burning which likewise 
 prevailed in the west. In the agricultural description 
 of Cornwall, these systems are described as customary 
 only on outlying and poor lands, while the better plots 
 in the vicinity of the homesteads at that time were 
 already commonly farmed by a regular convertible hus- 
 bandry.^ {Vide Appendix 0.) 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 individuals. 
 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. Worgan and Fraser, in Marshall, 
 Southern Department, pp. 525 and 531.
 
 12 ON THE AQRIOULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 each time for hay harvest were assigned to indi- 
 vidual joint owners, 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 customs 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 for a 
 lengthened period were allotted among the possessors 
 of yardlands for hay harvest ; there being, however, a
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 13 
 
 very considerable dilference 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.^ 
 
 It was not, however, the meadows exclusively, but 
 occasionally also the arable land, which underwent this 
 change in private use (severalty holding), asMr.Blamire 
 officially stated before the Inclosure Committee. But 
 this arable land was not changed annually in the same 
 manner as the meadow land, each owner retained the 
 portion which fell to his lot throughout the usual suc- 
 cession 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 concerning these very interesting con- 
 ditions, which might form an instructive supplement to 
 our Gehoferschaften 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 arrange- 
 ment mentioned. However frequent it may have been 
 with regard to the meadows, it must have been very 
 rare in respect to the arable land; and, 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 separated under their 
 authority. 
 
 After this cursive glance at the community of land, 
 which in England we see extending into the most 
 modern times, we will proceed 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, 
 
 Archajologia, London, 1849. Vol. xxxiii. 275.
 
 14 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 still it appears necessary, in order to be correct, to 
 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 w4iich 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 w^ell known that 
 Kemble has sought to prove, that the constitution of 
 the Anglo-Saxon commonw^ealth was founded on mark 
 associations. But Kemble was never in a position 
 authentically to prove the agrarian community upon 
 which these mark associations w^ere founded, and it is 
 with full justice that the careful author, E. Schmid, 
 says, "that true mark associations (i.e. communities) 
 existed, the organization of which w^as founded on a 
 community 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 smaller village communities, 
 which are to be distinguished from the great mark 
 associations of the "ga" and "scire" — mentioned 
 exclusively by Kemble — Konrad Maurer justly observes, 
 that w-e can learn nothing in that respect either from 
 Kemble or any of his predecessors, wdiile w^e 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, &c., that, besides numerous separate 
 farms, not less numerous villages as well, belonged to 
 
 ' Miincliener kritisclie Ueberscliau, 1 Bd. 1853, S. G3, ft'. 
 * Gesetze der Angelsaclisen, 2 Aufl., Leipsig, 1858, in Glossar., s.v. meaic, 
 S. 631.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 15 
 
 the same tribe. Unfortunatel}^ however, he was not in 
 a position to fill up these laciiniL'.^ 
 
 The results, therefore, of recent researches lead to 
 the conclusion that the sources are very meagre, and 
 the traces very faint, whence to draw even an im- 
 perfect ])icturc 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. ^Evi 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 indi- 
 vidual homesteads, 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 of the 
 town ; 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, 
 which latter meaning became later the ruling one. 
 
 '■Page 63, 1. c. 
 
 = Rectitudines Singularum Persouarum. Halle, 1842, p. 23, et seq. 
 ^ "Words and Places, by tlie Rev. Isaac Taylor, London, 1864, p. 119; 
 quoted in Quarterly Eevieic, July, 1864.
 
 16 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 Among a considerable number of names of places, 
 two other root-words occur, which Leo justly remarks 
 are synonyms of " tun," " ham " and " wurS," 
 " weorSig," " vurSig." 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 weor'Sig sceal beon wintres and sumeres 
 betyned," in the *' vetus versio," which, probably at 
 the latest, dates in the times of the first Norman kings, 
 is properly translated " rustici curtillum^ debet esse 
 clausum aestate simul et hyeme." There was no 
 ground for differing from this, and translating '' in- 
 closed land," or '' inclosure," as Schmid has done; 
 or " prsedium," 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 of Leo* (though Kemble^ 
 agrees with him), when he concludes from the occur- 
 rence of the word " tun " in so many names of places, 
 that in Anglo-Saxon times the permanent inclosure of 
 the fields by hedges was as common in England as at- 
 the present time, whereas for centuries these inclosures 
 have been in progress as one of the most important 
 of agricultural novelties. 
 
 ' Loco citato, p. 52. 
 
 * Cnrtillum, i.e. a small village consisting of a few houses, a small farm, 
 or rustic dwelUng, having a garden, curtilage. — H. A. 0. 
 
 ^ Of similar dues in Germany, see G. L. v. Maurer " Geschichte der 
 Frohnhofe," iii. s. 195. Already, according to the law books, each farmyard 
 was to be hedged in by its possessor. — Siichsishes Landrecht, ii. 49, § 2 ; 
 Schwabisches 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 inclose and hedge in his small farm." In a 
 similar manner also the old Jute law prescribes (from 1240 a.d.) iii. 
 chap. 57, van thtinen 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 MIDDLK AGE^. 17 
 
 The inclosed abodes of the Gerinaiiic peo])les every- 
 where comprised, in addition to the house and court- 
 yard, 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 pasturage rights and wild beasts, as 
 well as smaller inclosures for cattle requiring especial 
 care and attention, and which could be put up in tlie 
 farmyards in the village. As the population increased, 
 these inclosures in the villages were found to be too 
 small for the above-mentioned purpose, and consequently 
 isolated plots of land, very fertile and well situated, were 
 inclosed outside the village to meet the requirement. 
 There can be no question that there were small in- 
 closures of a similar character in England at the Anglo- 
 Saxon period,^ although on account of the poverty of 
 our sources, we may net be able to distinguish in every 
 individual case the primitive ones appertaining to the 
 homestead, from the secondary ones outside the village. 
 We see, for instance, frequently mentioned in the ancient 
 documents, inclosedgrassland,"gerstun," "syntrimaede," 
 a meadow withdrawn from the community ; 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) ;2 " oxena gehaeg " 
 (loco citato, No. 769) ; " oxena wic " (1. c. 1204), oxen 
 inclosures ; " sceap-liammas " (" Chronicon Monasterii 
 de Abingdon," I. p. 153), inclosures for sheep, " flax 
 hammas " (1. c. 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 tribes the rest of the land was only inclosed 
 
 ' On the difference between the original small inclosure belonging to tlie 
 homestead, and the later smaller garden and meadow plots outside the 
 village, vide Hanssen, in a review oi' the German edition of this work in 
 the Gottinger gelehrten Anzeigen, 1870, p. 132.'). 
 
 ^ Ettmiiller, " Lexicon Anglo-Saxonicum," p. 735 ; translates studfiild, 
 "armentum eqnorum"; but tlie sense given above in this place cannot be 
 doubtful.— See Kemble in "Codex Diplomat." III. p. xiiv. Falud, faM, 
 is the same word as fold, e.g. Slieepfold. 
 
 C
 
 18 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 when it was withdrawn from the community for the 
 pmi^ose 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 con- 
 clusion of this private use, the land again reverted to 
 common pasturage. It was necessary, then, to put uj) 
 fences at each inclosed season, which. in the time of 
 common pasture were again either partially or wholly 
 removed. 
 
 Some half-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, at 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 landlords.^ 
 
 Anglo-Saxon official 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 the inventory of the rural service of the " ceorlas 
 of Hysseburnan," Nos. 977 and 1077. The "gebur," 
 we read in the first record, " acertyninge xv gyrde 
 oS^e diche fiftyne (the peasant shall hedge 15 yards, 
 or ditch round 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 ovv^n free 
 time)." Thus, fencing belonged to the regular work 
 of the peasants. The demand for wood necessary for 
 this hedging must have been very considerable, and it 
 is on this account that Domesday Book refers so fre- 
 
 ' Report on Commons Inplosure, 1844, N. 3204.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 19 
 
 quently to forests used especially for this i)uii)osc : 
 " silva or iiemns ad claiisiu-am — ad sepes — ad sepes 
 reficieudas — ad sepes et domus," once also " rispalia 
 ad sepes." ^ In this regularly recuiTiiig work, as well 
 as in the gi-eat 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 with 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, o^Se 
 oSer gedalland to tynanne, and haebben sume getyned 
 hiora dael, sume naebben — and etten hiora gemaenan 
 aceras oSSe gaers, gan f>a |?omie, f'e j?aet geat agan 
 and gebete (n) j^am oSrum, )?e hiora dael getynedne 
 haebben, )7one ae (f) werdlan |7e l^aer gedon sie." 
 Literally, " if ceorls " have a common meadow, or 
 other partible land to fence, and some have fenced 
 their part, some have not — and eat up their common 
 corn or grass ; let those go who own the gap, and com- 
 pensate to the others who have fenced their part the 
 damage which there may be done, &c. &c. Price and 
 Schmid remark very justly that there is a hiatus after 
 " naebben," which they fill up from Ina, c. -10 : " und 
 recen heora neahgebures ceap in," and his neighbours' 
 cattle stray in and — . Each had his hedge to make at 
 the boundary of the common fields, as we find equally 
 elsewhere in the common village husbandry, that each 
 peasant farmer had to fence his plots in the winter and 
 summer fields^ where they touched on the common 
 boundary. Every one was "^ then answerable to the rest 
 
 • A General Introduction to Domesday Book, by Sir H. EUis. London, 
 1833, vol. i. p. 100, f. 
 2 Hanssen, Zeitschrift fiir du gesammte Staatswissenechaft, bd. xxi. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 of the common shareholders for his own hedge, in a 
 similar manner as it was prescribed in the Jute Law 
 (L. iii. cii. 58), and, not indeed for the field fence, but 
 the village one, in the Abbey Prum. (Si quid furatum 
 fuerit in curte per noctem et per sepem exierit, componet 
 ille per cujus glavem^ exierit, et si per totam, component 
 omnes de villa. ^) 
 
 It is well known that there are two opinions con- 
 cerning the nature of the separation of the arable land 
 from that used for pasturage among the oldest German 
 races ; one is, that there existed an irregular con- 
 vertible husbandry^ which took particular spots from 
 the whole acreage irregularly by turns, and brought 
 them under the plough, which after having been used 
 for several years again reverted to pasture : 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 modern times.* The 
 other is, that, from the first appearance of the German 
 tribes in history, there was a permanent separation of 
 the arable land and pasture, and 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 
 
 ' Glavem, here is put for clavem ; from clavis, in its mecliaeval sense of 
 locus clausus. — H. A. O. 
 
 ^ Registr. Prum. I. 695, at G. L. v. Maurer, Frohioliofe III. p. 317. 
 ^ Vide Appendix. 
 
 '' The passage in Tacitus above alluded to, is as follows : " Agri pro 
 numero cultorum ab universis per vices occupantiir, quos mox inter se 
 secundum dignationem partiunter ; facilitatem partiendi camporum spatia 
 praestant. Arva per annos mutant et superest ager ; nee enim cum ubertate 
 et amplitudine soli labore contendunt, ut pojnaria conserunt, et prata sepa- 
 rent, et hortos rigent : sola terrae seges imperatur." 
 
 Now the question is, What is the meaning of Tacitus ? Murphy's trans- 
 lation is evidently wrong ; neither can we admit the reading " 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. iii., Ode 24 : — 
 Campestres melius Scytha3. 
 (Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos) 
 Vivunt, et rigidi Getae 
 , Immetata quibus jugera liberas 
 
 ' Fruges et Cererem ferunt ; 
 
 Nee cultnra placet longior annii^. — Vide Appendix. 
 
 H. A. O.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE ACES. n 
 
 England, in which a three-field husbandry was most 
 generally prevalent.^ 
 
 There is much which indicates that at the time from 
 which our Anglo-Saxon sources date, since their first 
 formation, a permanent se])aration of pasturi; and grass 
 land had been the rule. The records concerning grants 
 of land mention almost universally the number of hides 
 conceded, and their constituent parts. The formuh^ 
 in which this was done are collected by Kemble 
 C' Codex Diplom." vol. i. p. 38, et seq.). They are 
 generally expressed thus : *' so many liides ' 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, quas 
 eidem telluri adjacet, ut cum pratis, pascuis, aquarum 
 rivulis ;" or "cum omnibus utensilibus, pratis vide- 
 Hcet, 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 
 representations of the "prata," "pascua," as appur- 
 tenances of the hide, that the arable land was separate 
 from the pasture. It is a further proof of the perma- 
 nent separation of the arable land from the pasture, 
 that the yrthland (arable land) is quoted frequently 
 under distinct boundaries ; and in particular instances, 
 also, the area of the conceded arable land, as well as 
 that of the meadows, is laid down; for example, 
 
 1 It is well known that opinions on this subject differ. Waitz, in the 
 " History of German Administration," vol. i., edition 2nd, p. !)3, et seci., 
 is the last advocate of the opinion that there was in Germany m the time of 
 Tacitus a permanent separation of arable land and pasturage while the 
 opposite view, which considers that the passage in Tacitus (" German a, 
 c 26), points to a tield-grass husbandry, and av nch appears to us o be t le 
 best grounded, is defeiufed by Hanssen m the ;' History ot the Field Sn .le.ns 
 of Germanv," 1. c. p. 54, et seq. Vide Appendix.
 
 22 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 "Codex Dipl." N. 1154 — " )?onne ligcaS be nor^am 
 porte xxxvi. aekera yr^landes and x. aeceras maede." 
 At the end of the Anglo -Saxon period this separation 
 was at any rate 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 
 earlier times there existed generally an irregular con- 
 vertible 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 dis- 
 tinguished (see Marshall, especially "Midland Depart- 
 ment," p. 17). These phenomena are not difficult to 
 account for, when we consider that in former times a 
 convertible husbandry existed, in which iirst 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 convertible 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 Ipaes maerclandes swa micel swa to j^rim 
 hidon gebyraS ;" also No. 1169, " and on f'an gemanan 
 lande gebyraS ))arto fif and sixti accera." It is very 
 clear that the question here is not one of common 
 pasture, for in that case a particular area would have 
 no meaning. These two cases are easily to be under- 
 stood, if we consider that a certain portion of the
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGElS. 23 
 
 common pasture was taken up and a})i)liecl temporarily 
 to arable purposes. 
 
 Witli regard then to the distribution and use of the 
 arable land, we can obtain additional proof of tlie 
 occurrence of its intermixed state, and of a husban(h-y 
 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 plots lying together. AYaitz, in his 
 treatise on the old German hide,^ mentions that in the 
 German title-deeds of the same period, though the farm 
 and farmyard were described, with an accurate state- 
 ment of the boundaries, the hide never was, and he 
 sees in this an indication of tiie 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, that the hide was in one 
 connected piece. But, it must be taken into consider- 
 ation that most of the title-deeds contained Royal 
 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 
 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 
 
 ' Abhandlung der Kon. Ges, d. Wissenscliaften ;'.u Cottiu,i:eii, Band, 
 1856, § 199 f.
 
 24 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 first case where no boundaries at all were shown, in 
 some of the title-deeds, a reason was expressly given 
 that the omitted 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), Aethelred 
 cedes five hides, " cujusdam loco sed communis terrae, 
 qui celebri aet Ceortatune nuncupatur nomine." The 
 record concludes, " rus namque praitextatum mauifestis 
 undique terminis minus dividitur, quia jugera altrin- 
 secus copulata adjacent" (a.d. 982). In another case 
 the same conditions were laid down thus : " J^ises 
 landgemaera syn gemaene sua j^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, "fiat nigon hida licggead on gemang o^ran 
 gedallande feldlaes gemane, and meada gemane and 
 yr^land gemane " (a.d. 961) ; that is, partitioned land, 
 and yet in community — an expression which would 
 imply that it w^as private property, but subject to rights 
 of a common husbandry. The other case, however, 
 without doubt is still the more frequent one, where the 
 boundaries of the whole village acreage in which the 
 conceded hides lie, are laid down at the end of the 
 
 title-deed. It then runs thus : " Concedo mansas 
 
 in villa;" and at the end, " j^is synd pe landge- 
 maera ae^." &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 in 1198 of Cod. Diplom. The first 
 from King Eadred (a.d. 949) of 18 mansae that he 
 grants fideli Wilfrico, in Welingforda ; the second, 
 from King Eadrig (a.d. 956) of 22 mans^, that he gives 
 " cuidam ministro Eadrico." The boundary descrip- 
 tions in Nos. 291 and 292 are still more strictly iden- 
 tical, as also in Nos. 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
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 26 
 
 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 pn, landgemaera to Draitune aecer under aecer). 
 But our view, that the boundaries of the tith'-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 " pin sind 
 pa landgemaero f^e to Weal^am hyrS J^ara j^ritiga 
 hida," and which, at the end of the boundary descrip- 
 tion, " |?onne heafS Eadmund cing gebocad Aelfsige 
 feowertyne hida binnan j^am J)retigum hidum landge- 
 maero, ofer wudu, ofer feld, ofer ecen laese and to 
 ecan urfe, and xii maeS aeceras at fiaere standan 
 butan pn.m 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, |7aes is gadertang on j^reo 
 genamod, j^aet is Hengestes ige and SeofocanwyrS 
 and William." Then follow the boundaries which 
 comprise only one entire piece of land. Possibly, the 
 question here may be one of different common acreages 
 {Gemeindc-fiureii), but this is very improbal)le, for if so, 
 they must have formed one united whole. On this
 
 26 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 account we are justified in 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 yr^landes 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 husbandry ; but these instances afford 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-zelgas^ may occur as well with regard 
 to another system of husbandry with permanent arable 
 land as in a three-field husbandry. 
 
 It seems that already in Anglo-Saxon times the 
 meadows were held in the land community under dif- 
 ferent conditions. Very frequently in the boundary 
 descriptions the meadows were described as belonging 
 to the hides, but separated from them ; for example, 
 " Codex Dipl." Nos. 132, 263, 284, 311, 361, 412, &c. 
 &c. In relation to the right of property and of use, 
 it is once expressly mentioned that the meadow^ in 
 question was a private one : " And seo mead, fe j^arto 
 (that is, to five hides at Eblesburnan) gebyreS wiS 
 Hunningtun, J7es is fifta healf aecer, seo his sun- 
 dermed " (" Cod. Dipl." N. 1118) ; from which we may 
 well conclude that this was not always the case. In 
 other places the meadows occur expressly as being in 
 common, as No. 396: "And swa mead gemaene 
 swa hio aer was {and there a common meadoiv where it 
 formerly ivas) " ; and No. 543, " ane mylne und her 
 gebyriaS of f'aere gemaenan meade XVI. aecyras {a mill, 
 and its right on the common meadoiv of XVI, acres)." In 
 many cases also it was laid down that to the ceded 
 hides of such and such meadows, belonged so many 
 acres — for example, No. 549. The common meadows 
 may probably have been the same as those which at a 
 later period were lot meadows, without separate pro- 
 perty in individual plots with periodical allotment of 
 
 ' Zelga— in old German, zelch — celga-zelge, the third part of a hide. 
 Adelung.— H. A. 0.
 
 OF IHE MIDDLE AGES. .-T 
 
 the portions : other meadows also there were, wliirli 
 Hke the arable laud were private property, but sub- 
 jected to a right of comuion use for i)asturage after the 
 hay harvest ; and perhaps the designation mndcrmcd 
 indicated that such had been freed from a comnuuiity 
 in use. 
 
 The third principal component part of the lands 
 of an old village community, the common pasturage, 
 is frequently alluded to in authentic documents. The 
 laws of King Eadgar lY. c. 7, 8, speak of a common 
 pasturage as an understood property of each '* tuns- 
 cips " ; 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 witnesses 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 of it 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 to^^•ns- 
 people shall report the circumstance to the Inspector 
 of the Hundred," &c. Not less do the old documents 
 expressly testify to the rights of common pasturage 
 connected with grants of hides. Thus, " Codex 
 Diplom." 270: " communionem marisci qufe ad istam 
 villam antiquitus pertinebat ; " or, No. 395, " and seo 
 laes is to foran eallum mannum gemaene on fam 
 hea^felda," 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 denberis in commune silfa ; " No. 190, " ut 
 communem silbam secundum antiquam consuetudinem 
 cum ceteris hominibus abeat ; " No. 211, " in commune 
 silfa, quam nos saxonice in 'gemenisse' dicimus ; "or, 
 No. 305, "in {^aem wudu, Jje )7a ceorlas brucaS," Nos. 
 432, 843, 1142, 1281, &c.
 
 28 ON 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 con- 
 sider the internal grounds which make it appear quite 
 natural that a village community, with intermixed 
 fields, compulsory cultivation (flurzwang), and a perma- 
 nent separation of arable land and constant pasturage, 
 had also a common pasturage, and that this common 
 pasturage existed as a component part of a village 
 community in later times; then there can be scarcely 
 a doubt that such a common pasturage was a part 
 of the lands of every Anglo-Saxon tunscijis. 
 
 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 villa3 and villatcT 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 the extent of these pasture and forest 
 associations. The usual expression to represent the 
 pasture there, is, " pastura ad pecuniam villas" ; more 
 rarely it is called " pastures communes " ; in one place 
 alone, if we admit the trustworthiness of the Index, 
 there occurs in Suffolk, " qua'dam 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, 
 forming 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 forest rights on uncultivated lands. 
 
 ' No. 255. Item prgedicta villa habere debet in eodem |)rato communem 
 pasturam, videlicet, quae "ymene niorlese'' appellatur, cum uliis villatis 
 scilicet, Somerforde, Pole et Kemele.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AOFS. 29 
 
 and especially rights of forest, wliicli were sometimes 
 called "king's woods," ^ and sometimes " connnon 
 woods."- There were also grants of rights of pasture 
 which were to be exercised in common with the royal 
 cattle,^ in which the rights of the king were limited.' 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, on which the king's right 
 was so extensive, 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 militaris, 
 pontis arcisve reconstructio). In details there is also 
 here a great deal which is uncertain and obscure ; 
 but the question as to the nature of the Folkland is 
 foreign to our purpose, because, although, as long as 
 it was not granted and cultivated, its use by the 
 dwellers for wood and pasture, subject to royal regu- 
 lation, was in existence, but its afiinity to the common 
 lands of agrarian associations was merely a distant 
 one. Aftei'the Norman Conquest and the introduction 
 of the feudal system, all further mention of the people's 
 
 ' e. g. B. N. 307, " aud on king's bochholte fif vena gang." 
 
 '^ King Earduulf gives the Bishop " Hrofensis ecclesia?," as a compensation 
 for a right of pasturage taken from it; another, " XII. gregum porcoruni ad 
 serbandam in publicis 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 gets mid 
 cyninges oxnum," and elsewhere. 
 
 " Concerning these royal rights of pasturage, which occur in all parts of 
 England, see Kemble, Saxons I. p. 293. 
 
 * Trinoda necessitas, i.e. the triple service, vis expeditio nulitaris, pontis 
 et arcis exstructio, to which all Anglo-Saxon property in laml was subject, 
 even the allodiatia bona were not exempt from these dues. — H. A. O.
 
 30 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 land ceases ; the greater portion must have been trans- 
 muted into bookland, which then, in common with 
 all 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 Eecord Office, attached to that work, which are very 
 voluminous, are much better suited for our purpose. 
 Of these the Land registers demand the first considera- 
 tion, which are published as additamenta in the 4th 
 volume 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 fully 
 into detail, is on this account the most instructive 
 among them all 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 " Rotuli 
 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. The Hundred Piolls of the counties of Bed- 
 ford, Buckingham, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Oxford, 
 set forth in the second volume of that publication, 
 especially, give us throughout a sharp and well-defined 
 picture, even in the minutest details, of the condi- 
 tions of the landed properties. Of the other publica- 
 tions of the same office, 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 Richard 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 si)iritual cor- 
 porations, and which are published by the Camden 
 Society, the " Liber Niger of the Abljcy of Peter- 
 borough," in an Appendix to the " Chroiiicon Peter- 
 burgense, nunc primum typis niandatum, cura Th. 
 Stapleton, Londini, 1849," written in the years 1125- 
 1128 ; the Domesday Book of St. Paul's of the year 
 MCCXXII, or " registrum de \dsitatione maneriorum, 
 per liobertum Decanum," edited, with an introduction 
 and annotations, by William Hale Hale (1858), and the 
 " Registrum sive liber irrotularius et consuetudinarius 
 Prioratus Beata3 Maria3 Wigorniensis," also edited in 
 the year 1865, by Wilham 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 Bene- 
 dictine Monastery of Worcester in the middle of the 
 thirteenth 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 condition of England. With 
 the middle of the thirteenth century commences that 
 comprehensive work, the " History of Agriculture and 
 Prices in England," by J. E. Thorold Eogers, from the 
 year after the Oxford Parliament (1259) to the com- 
 mencement of the Continental War (1793), of which, 
 up to the present time, two volumes (comprising 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 
 casuallv mentioned : but his book is of a verv 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
 
 32 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 Oxford Colleges, and put into a practical form. To 
 these sources must be added the great juridical authors, 
 Bracton and Fleta ; the first on account of his com- 
 prehensive and thorough specification of the whole of 
 English law ; the second, on account of his description 
 of the interior economy of a manor, in furnishing 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 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 hus- 
 bandry relations. On each of these manors was the 
 house of the lord (curia manerii, — capitale messagium, 
 — aula domini), with a courtyard and garden, &c., com- 
 
 ' The statute " Quia emptores terrarum et tenementorum de feodis 
 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. O.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 33 
 
 prising often several acres. The arable land of the 
 manor may then be reduced to two principal parts; 
 that is, the terra domiuica or demesne lands {Salnut), 
 and the terra homininn ct tonentinm. The land 
 was originally destined for the direct use of the lord, 
 but frequently parts of it were let off. '' Isti tcnent 
 de dominico" very often occurs in the Land registers, 
 which enumerate all the individual holders. The 
 legal difference of these "tenentes de dominico" from 
 the rest of the " tenentes " requires a more minute 
 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 
 law^s of William the Conqueror (I. cap. 29, 31) already 
 point to this condition of tenure, the lord could not 
 " removere colonos a terris, dummodo debita servitia 
 persolvent"; and further, "si domini terrarum non 
 procureut idoneos cultores ad terras suas colendas, jus- 
 ticiarii hoc faciant ; " while, on the other hand, Bracton 
 says of the " dominicum villenagium," "itemdicitur 
 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 Abbev of 
 Peterborough, the survey of the property belonging 
 to it concludes : " Summa in dominicis maneriis 
 abbatiae — et ibi sunt in dominico LVII carucae. Et 
 villani habent CC carucas et bovem." Besides villaiii, 
 there were also socinanni, hordarii, and cntscta' on these 
 properties. The landed property of St. Paul's Church, 
 in London, consisted of about 2-1,000 acres, of which 
 three-eighths were in dominico and hve-eighths terra 
 
 D
 
 34 ON THE AQRIGULTUBAL COMMUNITY 
 
 teneiitium.^ On the manors of the Benedictine 
 Monastery of Worcester, the "terra dominica" inchided 
 5,490 acres ; that of the villani, 8,210 acres ; and the 
 " Hbere 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 100 forlandie ;^ the super- 
 ficial extent of which is not given. 
 
 Although apparently it will ever be impossible to 
 explain clearly all the appellations which have been 
 applied to the different kinds of tenants in different 
 places and at different times, still in Domesday Book, 
 and even more plainly in the later Land registers (espe- 
 cially the Hundred Rolls) 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 comparatively small part of the population. 
 According to Sir Henry Ellis's reckoning, among the 
 
 ' Domesday of St. Paul's, Introduction, p. xiv. 
 
 ^ Registrum Prioratus, Wigorniensis, Introduction, j). xvii. 
 
 '■' In some of the registers of land it appears as if the newly-cultivated 
 property had assumed a particular status, differing as well fi'oni the " terra 
 tenentiuni" as from the "terra dominica." In Domesday of St. Paul's, after 
 dominicum, villenagium, libere tenentes, cotarii were cited, it is mentioned 
 verj' 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 aide to gain any further insight into this element from our authorities, 
 nor from any of the juridical writers. 
 
 Villani means the serfs wdio were glebee adscripti. — H. A. 0. 
 
 Socmanni, those inferior landholders who had lands in " soc," or franchise 
 of the king or some great baron ; privileged villeins, who, though their 
 tenui'es were absolutely copyhold, yet had an interest equal to a freehold. 
 Their services were fixed. — H. A. O. 
 
 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 AUEi<. 35 
 
 283,242 persons mentioned in Domesday Book, there 
 were 23,072 " socliemanni," 18 " socbemanni dimidii," 
 and 12,384 "liberi homines" and "dimidii Hberi bo- 
 mines." According to the careful researches of Hale 
 Hale, it is not imin-obable that by no means all the 
 liberi tenentes are given in the Domesday, but that 
 the number of all those who paid a money rent alone 
 is omitted from the account. The amount" only of the 
 money payment for each manerium is given under the 
 expression '-valet" — .s. — d. for each manor. Should 
 this conjecture be incorrect, certainly a very sudden and 
 excessive increase of the " liberc tenentes" must have 
 taken place in the first centuries after the Conquest. 
 In the monastery spoken of, in the year 1240, there 
 were 55 liberi liomincs and 85 socnianni ; in Domesday 
 on the contrary, in the same, only one solitary liber 
 homo habens hidam and two reddentes sextarias mcllis were 
 mentioned. The same results are obtained when we 
 compare the Hundred Rolls with the Domesday. In 
 the Villa de Coteham, in Cambridgeshire (which we have 
 chosen as an example for comparison, from a totally 
 different part of England), in the Hundred EoUs, besides 
 the possessors of manors, 26 " libere tenentes" are 
 quoted, while in Domesday there is not one. 
 
 Among these libere tenentes, at least in later times, 
 two kinds 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 socnmnni ;^ their service, 
 however, was never so oppressive as that of the class 
 which next follows, afid which was formed of the vil- 
 
 ' Libere tenentes with obligation to agricultural services are mentioned, 
 ex gr. in the Eotuli Hundred, vol. ii. pp. 629, 644, 645, 650, 656 ; liberi 
 pocmanni with the same obligation, p. 484. 
 
 d2
 
 36 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 lani, or peasant serfs, who were principally obliged to 
 perform the necessary agricultural labours, and occupied 
 nearly everywhere the greater part of the lands of the 
 manor. This class was named, in Domesday Book — 
 more than in the later Land registers variously, accord- 
 ing to localities. The designation " villanus," which was 
 already prevalent in the Domesday, gradually supplanted 
 all local sisiiifications and obtained in the later Middle 
 Ages a still wider sense. Juridical writers distin- 
 guished then, between "villeins regardant" and "vil- 
 leins 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 
 vary so much as 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 equality. On this 
 account we often meet wdth the distinction between 
 " pleni villani" and " semi" or " dimidii villani," full 
 and half serfs ; but very seldom (and not at all in the 
 ] ater Land registers) the mention of ' ' pleni ' ' and ' ' dimidii 
 socmanni." The original size of a possession of a 
 full serf appears to have been the " virgata terras" ; but 
 then ao'ain the size of this was not the same in difterent 
 manors. We find "virgata?" of from sixteen to forty- 
 eight acres, and the greatest difference in the size of 
 the virgata^ occurs on manors immediately bordering 
 
 ' In Hundred Rolls, vol. ii. p. 629, the size of the hide and virgata on 
 three manors which bordered on each other is given. On the first it com- 
 prised six virgatiB of twenty-eight acres ; on the second, six of forty acres;
 
 OF THE MIDDLE .l^'/i-S. 37 
 
 ou each other ; while on the same " maiieriimi," of all 
 the "vh'gata;," each comprised a like quantity of arable 
 land. In the north of England the partition of the 
 land according to "bovata'" or oxlands prc^vailcd — 
 eight " bovata^ " ^ being reckoned to each "canicata"" 
 (ploiighland). Thus, in Boldon Book, the " villani" in 
 Boldon and in several other villages have each two 
 " bovatas" of thirty acres. Now and then also in middli^ 
 and southern England "bovatae" are found which are 
 equal to half a " virgata"; for example, in Liber Niger 
 of Peterborough Abbey. 
 
 It is not the place here to enter more fully into the 
 legal and agricultural state of this most important 
 element of the English population of the Middle Ages, 
 but there can be no doubt that in the first centuries of 
 the Norman Conquest the English peasants were in a 
 state of the most oppressive serfdom. Objections, how- 
 ever, may be raised to this generalization. Bracton 
 expressly distinguishes 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 (nee scire debeat sero, quid 
 
 and on the third, four of forty-eight acres. See also introduction to 
 Domesday of St. Paul's, p. Ixiii. Casually vre may here notice the attempt 
 of Kemble to ascertain and fix the original superhcial 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 all 
 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 hida, which is api^rently connected with hhv, family, and whicli 
 Beda (Eccl. Hist.) translates famil'ia, must have been a land measure which 
 had an equal value for the support of a family, or for agricultural purjioses. 
 (Ploughland, aratrum, as hida is frequently translated in the records, Codex 
 Dii:)lom. Anglo-Sax.) In the state of civilization such as e.xisted in the 
 Anglo-Saxon times, the hide cannot certainly be reckoned according to its 
 sup'erficial contents. Kemble can only ground his position on very artificial 
 interpretations, and by the assumption of there being two kinds of acres 
 which were then in vogue, of a very different superficial extent. 
 
 > Bovata, modus agri, sec dectus (piod tantum terrre contieat tpiantum 
 bos unus arare potest spacio unius scilicet anni.— II. A. O. 
 
 '•^ Tantum feme quantum una carruca coli potest in uinio.— II. A. (>. 
 
 9 1 5 i G
 
 38 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 facere debeat in crastino — talliaii autem potest ad plus 
 vel minus). 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 contrary, 
 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 " tene- 
 menta." Even this class had no right to sell their pos- 
 sessions ; the only way they could alienate them was 
 in the form of a restitution to the lord of the manor, or 
 to his " ballivus," who then might let them afresh to 
 the person in wdiose favour the former possessor relin- 
 quished the property. But that the great mass of the 
 *' villaui" of the period stood in the first category is 
 sufficiently proved by the circumstance to which we have 
 alluded above, that the expression " villanus " occurs 
 as a technical appellation, as well of the state of per- 
 sonal serfdom, as of the agricultural class of peasants 
 who had obligatory 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 light.^ Further, nearly always when the dues 
 of the "villani" are quoted in detail in the sources of 
 the period, we find amongst them those which Bracton 
 
 ' However, according to Bracton, such a " tenementum in villenagio" 
 conld pass into the hands of a freeman, who then had to discharge all ser- 
 vices and dues the same as a " villanus," " sed nomine villenagii, et non 
 nomine personjB ;" but he was freed from those dues which were merely 
 consequent on personal servitude. See also Placit. Ahhrev. 29 Edw. III. 
 Ebor. Rot. 30, p. 243, tenura in villenagio non facit liberum 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. 
 PI?. 324, 325, 329, 1. c. ; while, on the other hand, at the same period, in the 
 decisions of the Curia Regis, the expression villanus is used to designate 
 the state of personal serfdom, e.g. Placitor. Abbrev. p. 25, et dicunt quod 
 villanus est, quia ipse debet arare et metere et auxilium dare per consuetu- 
 dinem et quod non potest sine licentia tiliam suam maritare ; or, p. 280, 
 villanus fugiens extra ttrram domini sui non debet capi sine processu.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. M 
 
 considers as signs of personal serfdom, and which could 
 not be demanded from free men, e^en thoiigli they 
 were in possession of a " villamim tenementum." In 
 these specifications it was almost always expressly men- 
 tioned that the *'villani" could not give their daughters 
 in marriage 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 expressly as a token of personal serfdom.^ Some- 
 times, 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 visitatiouis maneriorum 
 S. Pauli,"^ which in all essential points agree with 
 the statute, but go more into details ; and in the 
 " Hundred Rolls," II. 403—507, and elsewhere. We 
 might be tempted to perceive in these, the " villani 
 socmanni " of Bracton, but the peculiar personal dues 
 of the serfs w^ere also required from the " custumarii," 
 for instance as reported in " Hundred Rolls," 11. 507, 
 and elsewhere. According to the "articuli visitatiouis" 
 it was the custom to inquire of every " custumarius " 
 "quid et quantum dabit — pro filia sua maritanda ? " 
 and, " consuetudinarius " occurs as precisely syno- 
 nymous with " villanus " in the " Placit. Abbrev." 
 p. 161, " homines cognoverunt se esse villanos et 
 consuetudinaries predicti A. operando quidquid ipse 
 precepit et dando merchetum pro filiabus suis mari- 
 tandis." It is, therefore, inadmissible to make any 
 difference between "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 
 
 ' In tlie same sense as this tuken of personal servitude is quoted here, it 
 is found in the Phxcit. Abbrev. 1. c, and in the Hundred Rolls, II. 32/, m 
 villenagio sunt V. virga3 et tenentes sunt nativi. quod non posriiuit nmntitre 
 filias sine licentia doniini. 
 
 ■■^ Domesday of St. Taul's, ]>. 153, el soq.
 
 40 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 we may recognize the above-mentioned inferior kind of 
 " libere tenentes" — the not very nmuerous "socmanni" 
 who owed agricultural services. 
 
 But if, according to law, the "villani" were in a state 
 of the strictest serfdom, still by custom the amount of 
 their services had already become accurately defined 
 at an early period. We find everywhere in the Land 
 registers exact specifications 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 determined. It is very certain 
 that the position of this class must have been very 
 oppressive, even with regard to fixed services. Gene- 
 rally a man of each " virgata " worked three to four 
 days from the 1st August to Michaelmas, 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 extra- 
 ordinary service in the hay and corn harvests, being 
 obliged to turn out on to the farm two or three times 
 a year with their whole households — the housewife 
 usually being alone excepted (" excepta husewifa"), 
 " ad magnas precarias." ^ Add to this the occasional 
 carriage of wood from the forest, corn to market, mill- 
 stones from the town, as well as messenger service, 
 &c. &c., and indeed the whole variety of services which 
 were obligatory to the German peasant serfs of the 
 Middle Ages. Besides these services, they were liable 
 to numerous dues in kind and money taxes, and 
 
 ' " Ad magnas precarias." This barbarous expression means that the 
 peasant was obliged to mow and reap for his master besides his regular 
 weekly service. The word precaria is exi^lained — servitium quod prajstare 
 tenentur tenentes ceu metendis messil)us, falcandis fenis, et aliis servitiis, 
 quando ad id rogati f-unt. — H. A. O.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 41 
 
 laudemia (lieriots, " dat in obitu melius catallum "),' 
 which appear under different names, the signification 
 of which is often a veritable stumblingl)lock to the 
 antiquary and linguist. But in all these cases the 
 amount of the service and dues was in i)roportioii 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 " viri^ata." 
 
 The third class of dwellers on the manor, who are 
 always mentioned in the last place in the Land registers, 
 are the cotarii, cotsctUe, bordarii,^ which names imply, 
 possessor of a small house (in low German kotten, 
 katen, kate), with a courtyard attached to it, and some- 
 times a small plot of ground. Their small holdings 
 are very exactly given, especially in the second part of 
 the Hundred EoUs. Their homestead was sometimes 
 called "messagium," sometimes "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 pro])erty was 
 sometimes designated " cotland."'* This class also had 
 
 ' This actually exists at the present time in England ; when a copy- 
 holder 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 chattel. — 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 in 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 bordellum, is properly a small house or 
 hut. In the same Liber Niger a bercharius is mentioned at Estoua, 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, " Reg. Wig." 42 b. ; 
 but it was commonly expressly distinguished from the open field, e.g. " Rot. 
 Hund." II. 6G1, tenet ununi "messagium cum crofto quod tenet demidiam 
 acrani, et prseterea tres acras in campis. 
 
 ■• Only exceptionally we find properties of cothmds of a somewhat larger 
 extent, e.g. " Rot. Hund." II. ]>. ().31— a cotland of 24 acres.
 
 42 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 to perform obligatory service, but, on account of the 
 insiguiiicance 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 cot- 
 tagers ; except at harvest time they gave at most one 
 day per week manual labour ; 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 the right of leaving the estate, 
 or of giving 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 
 tokens of servitude were however expressly laid down 
 for the cotarii, e.g. "■ Eot. 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 monendayesmencroft, others of 
 " una quart. terr?e," and who cultivated 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 is of 
 as little importance to our present purpose 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 
 " villata " (the township). 
 
 In the first place the peasant serfs of every manor 
 were associated in a perfectly intimate fellov\'ship among 
 themselves ; their plots were so small that they were 
 
 ' On this account also, in some places, persons who 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 
 villanus for serf, and for possessors of peasant holdings to which service dues 
 were attached.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AOEH. 43 
 
 never sufficient for separate, independent management. 
 By far the most important agricultural labour of that 
 period was ploughing, aiid a peasant very rarely under- 
 took this for himself alone with his own tc-am and 
 plough. The team of a plough consisted then, as a 
 rule, of not less than eight draught cattle ; and 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, espe- 
 cially 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 verv 
 ancient, follows from the previously mentioned old 
 divisions of the plowlands (carucata) in eight bovatre 
 (ox-gangs), and the sources of our period also give 
 express evidences of it. The Liber Niger of Peter- 
 borough 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, " caruc^ octo or decern 
 capitum;" but there, indeed, for the most part the 
 
 ^ A Farmer's Tour through the East of England. London, 1771, pp. 122, 
 130. 
 
 2 Edinburgh Eeview, 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 
 
 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 Kolls, when 
 the plough labour of a villanus is reckoned, the addition 
 is often made, " sicut sociatur," e.g. Hundred Rolls H. 
 600, 601, 603; " arabit unam seylionem sicut socia- 
 tur"; or, still clearer, II. 631, " arabit — si propriam 
 habet carucam, si non, cum alio vel aliis sicut sociatur " ; 
 or, II. 645, "duo villani tenent inter se unam carucam, 
 arabunt cum caruca sua unam 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 
 Cambridgeshire — " 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 villatfe debent quater venire p. annum 
 ad pastum Domini ad precarias carucarum, illi scil. qui 
 carucas habent per se vel junctas cum aliis." Thus are 
 to be explained many statements in Domesday, in which 
 the " carucffi hominum " are given, and in which a 
 plough-team was always given to several " villani" 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 cer- 
 tain 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 Peterliorough 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, Kateriuges e.g.,
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 46 
 
 there are 40 " villani," each has a "vh'gata^ terne," 
 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 viUani " 
 and 12 " dimidii YiUani," who possess 18 " virgas 
 terrpe" 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 
 conqnestu), each of 16 acres, that they — " herciabunt 
 conjunctim cnm 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 be- 
 longed, but it appears very probable that it was to 
 all in common ; we learn even of a boat in common to 
 the village (commune batillum de Neuton), with which 
 " cotarii " were obliged to make certain expeditions for 
 the lord (Rot. Hund. II. 047). 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. Reg. Prior. Wig. Q5, 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 
 
 * The virgata was a small piece of land of indefinite size, the plot of the 
 peasant — 
 
 " A time there was ere England's woes began, 
 W^hen every rood of ground maintained its man." 
 
 ^ ° H. A. 0. 
 
 ' Rogers 
 
 ers (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 Gauge, and others, 
 by " to harrow with a harrow." How can, e.g. herciat per unum diem cum 
 vmo equo ad semen hiemale (Rotul. Hund. II. 461) be understood in the 
 sense of " hoeing the land " ?
 
 46 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 hay and in harvest. It is mentioned several times, 
 that the serfs ahernately (year by year) shall serve, the 
 first half of the peasants one year, the other half the 
 next— (Rot. Himd. II. 470, 476). Even this arrange- 
 ment 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 land. 
 
 The co-operative industry and ability of the " villani," 
 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 doininica," 
 with all its appurtenances, of 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 this intimate association of the peasants with 
 regard to husbandry labour on these manors, there 
 was also as a rule an intermixed state of the fields, and 
 an obligation 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 difi'erent 
 parts of the country ; but also the attempts of the 
 large landed proprietors, and above all of possessors of 
 manors, to withdraw their land from this agrarian com- 
 munity, were very apparent. At the time when these 
 
 > Registr. Prior. Wigorn. p. 47a ^ " curia cum pertinentiis et dua3 carucatae 
 terrte de dom. cum pratis et proventibus, et lieriotibus et villanagio tradite 
 
 sunt villanis ad firmam." p. 54^, haec villa tradita ab antiquo villanis 
 
 ad firmam ad placitum cum omnibus ad nos pertinentibus excepta advoca- 
 tione ecclesite et solvunt inde — prteterea percipimus medietatem proventuum 
 et herietum, prajterea debent metere, ligare et comportare totum bladum de 
 autiq. dom. de H." From tliis 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, hajc villa tradita est villanis ad firmam.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 47 
 
 attempts were made, we obtain authentic information 
 of the rnUng custom, which otherwise would l)e pre- 
 sumed as a matter of course. Thus, e.g. Gahridus 
 Bolle, of Dulhngham, complains concerning "de])astio" 
 of his land by the greater part of the inhabitants of 
 Dullingham ; they, however, "clamant habere commu- 
 niam ibidem per totum annum quolibet tertio anno, et 
 quolibet anno a festo S. Petri ad Yincla (1 Aug.) usque 
 ad festum Purihcationis 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 Gth Sept., o.s., 
 because he wished to cultivate the fallow. (Plac. c. 
 Regis 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 villi© et quod debent ibi communicare 
 quolibet tertio anno." It is a peculiar pleading, that of 
 the inhabitants of a viUage who have been complained 
 of for " depastura bladi," that they, on the land in 
 question, " debent communicare quolibet sccundo anno 
 a festo Nativitatis S. Johannis B. (24 June) usque ad 
 festum Annunc." (25 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 grass land. In many cases the lords of the 
 manor succeeded openly in withdrawing their demesne 
 lands, 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.f/. p. 12% " persona et liberi
 
 48 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 de Estum habent communia in stipnla (stubble) — de 
 novo essarto tantnm, remiserunt autem nobis in per- 
 petnuni communiam de vetere assarto." In another 
 manerinm, particular plots only were withdrawn from 
 the common pasturage; " nuUus habet communam in 
 pastura de Kingestun, nee in prato de Hultun, nee in 
 giardino " (p. SS^). And again, in another, the whole 
 of the demesne lands were freed from common rights ; 
 " nullus habet communiam nobiscum in antiquo domi- 
 nico, nee in bosco " (p. 53*), and again, 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 Eotuli Hund. 
 II. 529 : " Abbas tenet —in boscis, pratis, pasturis et 
 terra arabili XP^ acr. in uno clauso;" and still more 
 clearly, II. 67 : " tenet tres carucatas terr^e in dominico 
 et unum boscum de una leuca in circuitu et hoc totum 
 habet in separali per totum annum." Also the expres- 
 sion in Eeg. Wig. 87% " triginta acr^ quolibet anno 
 seminandae," relates plainly to arable land that was 
 not subject to compulsory cultivation for a succession of 
 crops, and thus, neither 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.f/. I.e. p. 34^ : 
 " communa 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, eg, 
 in an agreement (or contract), in which a certain 
 Kicardus le Joyce de Shennington transfers to one 
 Johannes le Soc, houses and plots of land, and the 
 said Johannes secures to Eicardus "communiam pas- 
 turae per omnes terras suas in Shennington, tempore 
 
 ' Bruera, the same as bruarium, sandy, barren soil, covered with a 
 heathy vegetation, thorns and thistles. — H. A . O.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 49 
 
 aperto, ct post fena et blada collecta exceptis le Inlaund, 
 le Bauecrofte, et terra de Stenelowe infra novas fos- 
 satas," (Placit. Abbrev. p. 232.) 
 
 At this period also, the meadows appear to have 
 been on a different footing with regard to private 
 use and common pasturage, and therefore tliese 
 points are expressly mentioned in the Land registers 
 far more frequently than similar relations applying to 
 arable land. The ordinary rule was that the meadows 
 should be for private use from the beginning of the 
 growth of the grass to the end of the hay harvest; 
 however, these limits w^ere not always fixed in the 
 same manner. We find that " prata pastura) culturae" 
 were in private use (separabilia), a Purific. S. Marias 
 (2 Feb.) usque ad fest. Johannes B. (24th June), 
 Eotul. Hund. II. G18; or, "a Pascha usque ad fest. 
 S. Johannis B." (I.e. ii. 610); or, "a festo Purific. 
 S. Marine usque ad Gulam Augusti" (Aug.l), I.e. ii. 626. 
 An exceptionally short period of common pasturage is 
 cited in Piot. Hund. II. p. 616, " pratum separabile, 
 quod vocatur Piedmad exceptis a festo S. Michaelis 
 usque ad festum S. Martini " (11th Nov.). Sometimes 
 during the fallow years of the arable land the ad- 
 joining meadows were open the whole year as common 
 pasture. We have cognisance of an agreement in 
 which a meadow is given back thus : " quando campus 
 \il\ce contiguus praedicto 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 wdien a 
 meadow from its nature is not put to fallow^ it shall 
 lie "ad w'arectum quolibet tertio anno" (Pot. Hund. 
 II. 610) ; and perhaps, also, when the meadows of 
 the common pasturage lie open, "tempore aperto."^ 
 Tliese customs also, wdiich are sufficiently explained 
 by the desire not to exhaust the meadows by constant 
 hay crops, had been exceptionally preserved to later 
 
 ' e.g. Rot. Hand. II. 484. Templarii teiunt iniuin pratum si^parubile et 
 incluserunt cum fossis et sepibus et fuit commune tempore aperto. 
 
 E
 
 50 ON THE AORICULTUEAL COMMUNITY 
 
 times on a manor described by Williams in the 
 Arcliaeologia. 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 naturally could have held 
 good with regard to the meadows of which the par- 
 ticular plots were strictly private, as well as to those 
 on which the several plots were constantly allotted for 
 hay harvest. 
 
 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, qure prata spectant ad omnes 
 homines de Stangrund et Faresteved" (liot. 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 parks which were 
 frequently attached to the manors, and for the small 
 inclosures above mentioned, which were commonly 
 designated by the word " croft." 
 
 But if we admit that the ruling system of this time, 
 for arable land and meadow^s, 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 compulsory cultivation would have led to an
 
 f)F THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 61 
 
 iiitolerablo state of things if cadi liokling, at least, liad 
 not had a share in each of the differently 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 inter- 
 mixed state, not only of the tenant land, but also of 
 the demesne, which, at least in many cases, was mixed 
 up with that of the tenant. Thus, e.g. William Hale 
 Hale imparts to us, in the notes to the "Articuli visi- 
 tationis maneriorum S. Pauli," 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 arabilis," viz. : — 
 
 Ad unam seysonam. Then follow twelve different 
 parcels of unequal size in different fields (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. 
 
 The same author also gives an account of per- 
 fectly similar inventories of the demesne lands of the 
 manors belonging to the Prior of Ely, without giving 
 their date, which were mixed up with, and used with 
 those of the tenants in a community of three-field 
 husbandry. In Swaft'ham (probably the Swapham 
 Prioris of the Kot. Hund. 11. 484), in Cambridgeshire, 
 the three "culturas" of the "terra dominica" w^ere 
 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 
 praedicta terra jacebit quolibet anno tertio in communi 
 cum v>'arectis."^ 
 
 ' Domesday of St. Paul's, p. cxxii. 
 
 * Register 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 Report on Enfranchisement of Copyhold Bill, 1851. 
 No. 921. 
 
 e2
 
 52 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 To what extent the parcelling at that time went in 
 England is shown, not only hy many exchange and 
 purchase agreements in Maddox " Formulare Angli- 
 camim" (especially Nos.CCLVIII.,CCLXVII., CCLXX.), 
 where plots of ground of a few acres, consisting 
 of several separate parcels, are descrihed ; 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 i-egisters, 
 declare " tres acrae inveniri non possunt." The Liber 
 Niger of Hexham Priory^ which, however, had its 
 origin in the latter end of the Middle Ages, records 
 further an enormous scattering of the demesne and 
 tenant's land. The demesne lands, e.g. of a village (de 
 Haghe), amounting altogether to 189^ acres, lie in 68 
 fields, or rather " gewannen" f 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 acroe" (p. 48). In Kirkve, in the 
 county of York, a " bovata" consisted of 12 acres of 30 
 plots of arable land, and three parcels of meadows, each 
 of 1 rod (p. 90). Of the demesne lands of a manor at 
 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 acr?e faciunt carucatam eo 
 quod LX in hieme, LX in quadragesima et LX in 
 sestate pro warecto debent exarari, de terris vero bipar- 
 titis debent ad carucam octies viginti acr^is computari, 
 ut medietas pro warecto habeatur et medietas alia 
 
 ' The Priory of Hexham ; its Title Deeds, Bkck Book, &c. Vol. 11. 1865. 
 ^Gewannen means plots of land of nearly eqiial quality into which the 
 German township is divided. — H. A 0.
 
 OF THE MIDVLE AGES. 53 
 
 in hieme et quadragesima seminetnr" (If. c. 72). Of 
 these two systems liogers^ holds that the last, or two- 
 field Imshaiidry, 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 trustwortliy and 
 authentic proofs of a three-field husbandry, and Uiese 
 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. 800 (Cam- 
 bridgeshire), p. 251 (Nottinghamshire) ; and further, 
 Eot. Hundred II. GIO (Huntingdonshire), as well as 
 the descriptions of Nastock in Essex, and Swaffham in 
 Cambridgeshire. Out of tlie 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 believe, that in the 
 opinions of many writers of the time, the three-field 
 husbandry was the rule then 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 
 *' Formuiare Angiicanum," No. CCXXVYII. A certain 
 "Wilhelmus de B. leases to the Abbot and Convent of 
 Bordesley (according to Dugdale Monast. Anglo., situ- 
 ated in the county of Worcester) " totam terram de 
 dominico (arable land and a meadow) ad decem croppos, 
 ita quod dicti Abbas et Conventus integre percipient 
 dictos decem croppos de terra arabili et chevesces (?) 
 quas receperunt ad warectum et quolibet anno interim 
 vesturam dicti prati. Pro his vero decem croppis percepi 
 ego dictus Wilhelmus — quinquagiuta 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 
 
 ' A History of Agriculture, &c., p. 15. Half the arable estate, as a rule, 
 lav in fallow, called warectatio in the language of the time.
 
 54 ON THE AORICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 taken, as a matter of course, that in fifteen years, from 
 arable land in which the meadows yielded crops fifteen 
 times, ten harvests only could be gathered. In like man- 
 ner, this system of husbandry was the basis of different 
 leases on the Manors of St. Paul's Church, published 
 by 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 
 blado seminatarum et similiter totum bladum LXX 
 acrarum de vernali blado seminatarum et quater XX 
 acres warectatos." Also, a lease of the year 1232, in 
 wdiich the 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 Whitsuntide, and in 
 it is mentioned " that of the arable land of the pro- 
 perty, 78 acres in all, in different fields were sown 
 with oats, 51 i acres with wheat and rye, 50 acres were 
 fallow " (or, more correctly still, to be broken up, " terra 
 wareccanda "^). 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 crops preponderated far over the winter crops 
 and fallow, but the originally equal division of a 
 landed property into the three-fields was frequently 
 cancelled by subsequent change of possession, and 
 then, as we presume on other evidence, sometimes 
 a portion of the fields in the three-field husbandry, 
 wdiich properly should have been cultivated with winter 
 crops, was, exceptionally however, sown with summer 
 crops and vice versa. In the Kot. Hund., as a rule, 
 the arable land of the properties is not particularly 
 described according to situation or division ; still w^e 
 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 YP'' acras 
 
 ' The Priory of Hexham, &e. Vol. II. p. 96.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 56 
 
 et XIII acras termequiejacent in tribiis campis et tertia 
 pars jacet in warecta." More frequently in this and 
 other land registers, in which the peasant services arc 
 laid down, the prevalence of the husbandry system in 
 question, is to be concluded from the plough work being 
 divided into three equal parts: " inhieme,"^ " in quad- 
 ragesima," and "in jtstate"; or, "ad semen hiemalc," 
 or " hivernagium, ad semen quadragesimale"; or, "ad 
 trimesium" and "ad w^arectum";^ thus, in the Kotuli 
 Hundred II., pp. 440 and 441, 4G1, in Cambridge- 
 shire, C05 (debet arare ad tres seysiones), 659, 6G1 
 (arabit cum caruca sua per quatuor dies tempore 
 hiemali et per quatuor dies tempore quadragesimali et 
 per quatuor dies tempore testivali) in Huntingdon- 
 shire, but also on the borders of Wales, on the 
 properties of the Priory of Worcester, e.g. lleg. Prior. 
 Wig. p. O*": "tres aratume quatuor carucarum tribus 
 temporibus anni, vid. quatuor ad liibernagium, quatuor 
 ad trimesium, quatuor ad warectum : p. 14^, quoelibet 
 virgata arabit ad hybernagium tramesium et ^varectuin 
 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 w^arectum." 
 Just as often, it is true, the ploughwork occurs, only 
 divided into tw^o seasons, winter sowing and summer 
 sowing ; and sometimes also the obligation of the 
 peasants to plough during the wdiole year, with the 
 exception of harvest time, or from Michaelmas to 
 Midsummer, 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 
 
 ' That is late in autumn ; in the English ]\Iediseval records Martinmas 
 was regularly reckoned in the winter (11 Nov.). 
 
 « " "What in this country has usually a summer follow, for which tliere are 
 three and sometimes lour ploughings, the first is usually in Novemlieror 
 December, if the ground be dry, across the butts, but oftener lengthwise, i he 
 followiu" May it is ploughed across the furrows, which is called stiruing 
 (rureu)"'' Holland. General View of Agriculture of Cheshire. London, 
 1808.-11. A. O.
 
 56 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 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 was only 
 once ploughed for autumnal crops, or that the fallow 
 ploughing was done exclusively with the manorial 
 ploughs, and that the peasant services (carucae adjuta- 
 trices) could be dispensed with, because the time for 
 fallow cultivation vras much less limited than that for 
 seed ploughing. The fallow could be prepared in 
 the course of the summer at any convenient time 
 from the end of the summer sowing till late into the 
 summer. It appears that peasants ploughed on the 
 fallow (warectare) from Hokeday (second Tuesday after 
 Easter) till Midsummer (Rot. Hund. II. 461), and to 
 Vincla Petri (Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 34).^ 
 
 ' The plouf^hing at the hitter end of summer, called "the first styrringe" 
 by Fitzherbert in the Boke of Husbandry, which took place between the fallow 
 anil 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 
 rural services were fixed. This second ploughing, intervening between the 
 fallowing and seed ploughing, called rebinare, has only been found by him 
 mentioned once in the Service Registers (Regist. Prior. W^igorn. 33 >, "item 
 rebinavit unam 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 Registers ; for, according to Fleta, who wrote at the beginning 
 of the reign of Edward I., this rebinatio Avas already in use in the regular 
 cultivation of the fallow ; he says (lib. ii. c. 82), " nam una acra pro fru- 
 mento trinara exigit aruram." He indicates (lib. ii. 73) April as the best 
 time for the fallow-balk (warectatio); while the second, the "rebinatio," 
 after Midsummer should be done " cum terra pullulaverit post warectum." 
 And already in the middle of the twelfth century, 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 wliich are given by W. Hale Hale in Domesday 
 of St. Paul's, it is laid down, " ad curiam de Waletuna inventse sunt IX 
 viginti acrae de wareto de quibus XXVIII sunt rebinati (sic) et IX faldati 
 et XXXIII serainati" (p. 131). And of another farm, "et LXXXVII acrse 
 de wareto, et de his XXXVIII rebinati et I et dimid. faldati et XV semi- 
 nati" (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 j^roperty 
 with " magnam grangiam plenam ex una parte hiemali et ex altera vernali 
 blado, et totiim fenum illius anin et totam saisonem waretatam, et LX acras 
 rel)inatas, 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 ; thi;s he was obliged to limit the second 
 summer ploughing to part of tlie same; on anotlier part a very different 
 kind of cultivation was the rule, viz. It was manured by sheep penning
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 57 
 
 But however this may be, in opposition to these 
 frequent and undoubted references to a three-field 
 husbandry, we have only met ^Yith one indication, 
 which it is highly probable may relate to a two-tield 
 husbandry, and that is in the " liegist. Prior. Wigorn." 
 which has already been referred to several times. Of 
 the demesne land of a manerium (Herfortun), it is 
 there remarked: "in dominico — XII virgat^e terni3 
 unde quaelibet tenet in quolibet campo X acras," and 
 the tenants had their lands likewise (the virgatas in 
 villenagio) divided into two fields of nearly equal size 
 (pp. GO, 62). Certainly it is possible to refer this 
 equal division to two parts of the whole acreage, on 
 which different 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 husbandry. Hence a 
 two-field husbandry existed here and there exception- 
 ally, which cannot be a matter of any doubt, as we 
 have already seen from the words of Fleta which have 
 been given above ; but if we 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 husbandry still 
 existed, the three-field husbandry was the rule; we 
 may then assume — as long as the assertion of the 
 most recent historian of Enghsh agriculture is uu- 
 
 (faldiciiim), or stall dung (femicium) ; and, finally, it appears that some- 
 times a part was already cultivated. This certainly is an earlier conmience- 
 ment of an elaborate cultivation of fallow lands than we can point to in 
 Germany. Hanssen (" Zeitschrift fiir die gesammte Staatsvvissenschaft," 
 B. XXI." s. 92) is of opinion tliat in Germany about the thirteenth century 
 they had arrived at the triple ploughing of the fallow. Thudichum 
 (" Gau-und Markverfassung," s. 159) phices the " rebinatio," or second 
 ploughinfj, 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, L c. p. 95, several records of the Lower Rhine of the mi.ldle 
 and end of the thirteenth century, first quoted by Jacobi, as tlie first 
 indications of a partial cultivation of the fallow land.
 
 58 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 supported by any proofs — that three-field husbandry, 
 as was also the case m 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 jermanent pasturage necessarily belongs to a 
 three-held husbandry, and it appears that such was 
 seldom wanting altogether in England. It is re- 
 marked of some properties of St. Paul's Church: " et 
 non est ibi pastura nisi cum quiescit dominicum 
 per wainagium,"^ and, "non est ibi pastura, nisi 
 quando terr^ dominicae quiescunt alternatim incultse" 
 (Domesday of St. Paul's, pp. 59, 69).^ But this were 
 plainly an exceptional condition, and there can be 
 no doubt that generally a great part of the country 
 lay in an uncultivated state, and, if we except for cut- 
 ting wood, was principally used as pasture. And this 
 is also certain, that the tenants of the manor used this 
 pasture in common. Not seldom also " pasturae sepa- 
 rabiles," often of the smallest extent, were mentioned 
 with the "terra dominica" ; but ^^ several" wood or 
 pasture lands scarcely ever occur when the possessions 
 of the tenants 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 some cases 
 this form of right may have had its origin from the 
 
 ' Wainagium = Ganagium ; i.e. fallow for ploughing. — H. A. 0. 
 
 ^ The stubble pasturage was proportionately more valuable in England 
 on account of the custom of merely reaping the ears of the corn and leaving 
 the long stubble standing. It was then gathered for thatching. The 
 " coUigere stipulam ad cooperiendam domum," or also simply, " coUigere 
 stipulam," fre(piently 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. 69 
 
 manors having been originally formed on land that 
 had never before been cultivated as separate farm 
 properties, apart from any agrarian community ; e.;/. 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 granted to his " subtenentes" 
 particular portions for separate use, together with the 
 necessary right of pasturage on the unpartitioned land 
 which remained in his possession. But the very same 
 form of right without doubt very frequently arose from 
 a lord holding- from the crown either immediatelv or as 
 mesne lord a whole district in fief, and thus becoming a 
 superior proprietor of the whole common village district 
 (tenet manerium et viUam). Several manors might 
 then be in the same "villa" or " villata," but one of 
 them vvas 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 Hmited by the regulated rights of use which 
 his tenants possessed. So also with the common pas- 
 ture, to \Yhich 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 jmidical 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. 
 
 • L. Slein (Verwaltungslelire, vii. 266) is of opinion that tlie right of 
 propeitv 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. 12 : and m this 
 sense he combats an adverse assertion of Roscher. The above law, 
 whose influence on the history of the common lands in England has 
 been jud-ed of in a completely mistaken sense by Stein, was ot no 
 importance whatever in that respect. The law did not abrogate the 
 supreme right of the king in all laud and soil as Stem imaguied, 
 but merely set aside a particular form of tenure, viz. the military tenure, 
 and changed it into another form of tenure which already e.xisted 
 in the Middle Ages, together with the military tenure, the socagmm 
 Uberum (free and common socage). In the same way as with this tenure 
 the law allowed the tenures by " fracc almoigm" and «' grand sergeanty, 
 to remain. Stein has also erred completely as to the meaning ot joint 
 tenancy, when he states that since 24 Carl. II. c. 12, joint tenancy 
 indicates the different conditions of rights to the common pasturage.
 
 60 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 The rights of common, appendant, appurtenant, and in 
 gross, as distinguished in the legal manuals, 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 
 are treating all pasture land in England was exclu- 
 sively manorial pasture, or whether there existed 
 rather proper common pastures, the property of the 
 commoners, appears to us to be doubtful. In more 
 modern times real common pastures were not wanting 
 in England, in relation to which the rights of the 
 lord of the manor as lord of the soil were not 
 opposed to the pasture rights of the commoners, but 
 which were the common property of many tenants ; it 
 remains a question, however, whether in these cases 
 the right of property of the lord of the manor was not 
 set aside at a later time. At least, the opinion of the 
 most experienced witness concerning this subject who 
 was examined before the Inclosure Committee tended 
 towards this view. ^ But if, e.g, in the *'Eotul. Hun- 
 dred," II. p. 534, it is recorded of a '*villata" in Cam- 
 bridgeshire, " tota villata de Yameling habet de pastura 
 communi cum bruera XIP^ acras," and in this 
 "villata" there were different "feoda" whose pos- 
 sessors were the under vassals (subtenentes) of dif- 
 ferent crown vassals (tenentes in capite), none of 
 which are described as '* capitale manerium," then 
 it is not apparent who could have been lord of the 
 manor on this " pastura communis," and wt 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 all the libere tenentes. 
 Similar relations, however, occur frequently in the 
 Eotuli Hundred.^ Sometimes it was mentioned that 
 
 ' Mr. Blamire, Inclosure Report, 1844, No. 336, et seq, 
 
 ^ Pasturee, marisci or bruerre totius villae, occur also, II. p. 420, 426, 
 484, 554, boscus, totius villatse, 534, 535, pastura communis hominibus 
 of Stowe, 496 ; in other places it is laid down 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 TEE MIDDLE AGES. 61 
 
 a pasture or a heath with several villages or manors 
 which W'Cre not a united ** villata," were in common, 
 I.e. II. 602, GI6 ; and comparatively frequent were 
 entries of similar large communities with regard to 
 forests. I.e. II. 450, C02, G05. There, also, no precise 
 lord of the manor can be traced, but we nnist rather 
 seek perhaps in these large associations the last 
 remains of larger district communities (Markgenos- 
 senschaften). 
 
 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 manuals. The most widespread among these rights 
 appears to have been the so-called " common appen- 
 dant/' that is, those rights of pasturage which flowed 
 from the arable land of the manor, and 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 his 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 de- 
 cided 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 manv cattle as the land can maintain 
 
 ' Wincrove Cooke, on " Inclosures and Rights of Conmioiis," 4th edit, 
 London, 1864.
 
 63 ON THE AGHIGULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 during the winter are said to be levant and coucliant 
 on the hind. 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. 
 
 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 an 
 express grant from the owner of the land, or on 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 all 
 it is only limited in its extent besides, by the capacity 
 of the pasturage to nourish the cattle, by the nature 
 of the grant, or the corresponding prescriptive right. 
 In case however of there being no determined num- 
 ber or kind of cattle to be turned out, laid down, 
 then the limit for cattle levant and coucliant on lands 
 to which the right appertained applied to the common 
 appurtenant. This kind 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 already 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 with ref:i;ard to the visitation and surveys of 
 the manors prescribe openly in this sense, that by the 
 " pastura foriiiseca, qua3 est communis," the number of 
 the cattle which the landlord and tenants may turn 
 out must be regulated. The smallest economical im- 
 portance among the different pasturage rights attaches, 
 according to their nature, to the commons " in gross "; 
 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
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 03 
 
 common pasturage ; for instance, the serfs, besides 
 their other services, gave also as a rule es]iecial rents for 
 pasturage, mast, and wood, (" herbagium," " lessilver" 
 for the pasturage, for the use of the forests " wode- 
 silver," for s^Yine-mast "pannagium," for the use of 
 dry wood ''pro mortuo bosco"), &c. &c. 
 
 Further, the lord of the manor, as lord of the soil, 
 had the right to inclose for his particular use a portiou 
 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 bv two laws, Statute of Merton, 
 c. 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 
 small holdings on their manors to knights and other 
 small freeholders 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 feoffati habeant sufficientem pas- 
 turaai 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 sufficit ad 
 tenementa sua cum libero ingressu et egressu," that 
 the complaint should be dismissed.^ This law there- 
 fore established 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 
 
 • Eight of approver. Whether is this from appropriare, to appropriate, 
 or from prohus approbare, to improve ? W. Hale Hale adopts the tirst 
 derivation, but manifestly the word is often used in the sense ot to improve, 
 as appears from a passage quoted by him from Fleta II. 73, m which a 
 servant who administers a property for his master is styled " approvator 
 fidelis et optimus." 
 
 « These short-sighted and tyrannical laws were afterwards made nse of 
 to rob the tenants of their rights. Who was to judge of how much pasture 
 was "quantum sufficit"?— H. A. O.
 
 64 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 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 
 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 the 
 pasture sufficient 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, 
 of the encroachment on pasture rights " shall be dis- 
 missed, 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 ma- 
 norial property." In both these laws the question only 
 is concerning the complaint of the "libere tenentes," the 
 " vihani " 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 pasture. 
 
 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 in 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 Rolls contains numerous 
 complaints to the juries appointed to report concerning 
 the illegal encroachments on the common rights. But 
 the land taken from the common pasture was not 
 alwavs cultivated, but sometimes used as the private
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 65 
 
 manorial pasture or park/' A park that was inclosed 
 from the common pasture by the lord of the manor 
 is mentioned in the liot. Hund. II. p. 605, and Placit. 
 Abbrev. § 223, where the complaints of the commoners 
 are rejected, " quod liabent suiiicientem connnuniam 
 extra pnnedictum clausum." Still more frequent are the 
 citations of a "pastura separabilis," with the addition : 
 ''qujTB quondam fuit communis," or, "quae solcbat esse 
 communis totius vilhie " (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 
 common Mark was the common property of all the 
 usufructuaries, 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, this 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 tenants in the cultivation of the 
 manor lands. That this view is correct, appears pro- 
 
 The origin of many of tlie parks in England.- II. A. O. 
 
 F
 
 66 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 bable to us, from passages which occur occasionally in 
 which it is expressly stated that the peasant might 
 freely sell his ox or yomig 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 fakhe " (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 
 helds for the purpose of manuring them.^ This right 
 obliged the vassals to pen their sheep on the manorial 
 pasture, 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 fakke," or " unius 
 faldae," or " dimidia? 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 hokesdav* (the second Tuesday after Easter) 
 usque ad festum S. Martini " (Rot. Hund. II. 458, 459), 
 or, " et oves erunt in falda domini ab hokesday usque 
 ad fest. S. Martini" (II. 539), or, " et omnes isti (scil. 
 libere tenentes) ponent faldam suam singulis annis 
 super terram dominicam ab 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 
 
 ' Rot. Hund. II. 463 : " si ipse liabeat puUum vel boviculum et laboravit 
 cum illo, non potest vendere sine liceiitia domini, si non laboravit, licitum 
 ei vendere sine licentia." 
 
 ^ Obligatio (|uo tenentur vassalli oves suas in faldam dominicam immit- 
 tere ad stercorandos illius agros. Du Cange. — H. A. 0. 
 
 ^ 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- 
 puffiion of the Danes in the time of Ethelred. Highday s and holidays. 
 — H. A. 0. 
 
 ^ Usque ad vincla, subaud. Petri, 13 August, o.s. St. Peter's day. 
 — H. A. O.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 67 
 
 " levavit injnste faldam." In tlio 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 valual)le. 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 com- 
 pensation in that the draught cattle of the peasants 
 were proportionately 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 of that of the 
 manor farms, much more was employed for the nourish- 
 ment 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 svstem, which thus far we 
 have endeavoured to describe. 
 
 A system of money payments, as opposed to the 
 medieval barter in kind, became established in 
 England at a much earlier period, and far more 
 extensively, than in the great inland countries of the 
 European' continent. The principal reason of this was 
 the same which likewise in classical antiquity on the 
 coasts of the Mediterranean Sea had given an impulse 
 to a proportionately active traffic, and caused the 
 spread of that system of 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 inacessible 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 police 
 system for preserving the public 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 conceive 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 
 labour services of the vassals, on which, as we have seen, 
 the original cultivation of the manor lands depended, by 
 converting them into a fixed money rent. In the thir- 
 teenth century we already find adserations^ on the pro- 
 perties of the monastery of Worcester and St. Paul's 
 Church partially carried out. In the Land register of the 
 first are cited "virgatse in villenagio," and still more 
 frequently " cotarii," who merely paid a money rent ; in 
 very many registers there is a statement, side by side, of 
 dues, as to how they shall be paid, in work, dues in kind, 
 or " laudemise," and on the other side of the money rent 
 which the peasant proprietor had to pay instead of those 
 services, e.g. 103'', "in hoc manerio sunt viii. virgatse 
 servilis conditionis, quarum quaelibet si censat, dabit ad 
 quemlibet trium terminorum xii. d. pro omni servitio, ut 
 clicunt." In other places a distinction is made : " virgata 
 ad censum posita — ad operationem," e.g. 69^, 71^ 86''; 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 Avork to per- 
 form, partif'ularly in harvesting, but very much less than 
 when ^ the hides stood merely on the footing of "ad 
 operationem." So also a distinction was made between 
 the " novae" and the " antiqua^ consuetudines villanorum" 
 (p. 102'"'-'), where the "novse" included less work and 
 
 ' Adajratio, i.e. fixing a money value on labour services, or instead of 
 them.— H. A. O.
 
 OF rilK MIDDLE AGES. 69 
 
 larger money dues. Also in the liotuli lluiulrud are to 
 be found clear traces of the gradual change of service 
 into rent, e.g. 11. 409, 410, and in other places : "reddit 
 
 pro operibus, . . . .s- d. ad voluntatem domini. " ]\Ianifestly 
 
 these valuations for services (adceratio) could only hold 
 good by the mutual consent of those who paid and those 
 who claimed the services, and the addition " ad volunta- 
 tem domini," which is to be found also in the Land 
 registers of Worcester, shows that the lord of the soil 
 expressly reserved to himself the right to return to the 
 personal services. However, as it generally happens 
 under such circumstances, the new rent system gradu- 
 ally took root, and a onesided return to the old con- 
 dition — which besides as a rule with the progressing 
 money payments, would have been against the interest 
 of both parties — was felt to be unequitable and 
 indeed unjust. Kogers, 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 return 
 to 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 authentic founda- 
 tion, but they are not wholly improbable. The prices 
 which were fixed in this valuation of services (adae- 
 ratio) were generally very low, and the depopulation 
 after the plague, as Rogers proves, caused a considerable 
 rise in tlie rate of daily wages. The interest which the 
 lord of the manor had in making such an attempt was 
 hence very apparent, but in any case these attempts were 
 attended with no permanent result. Occasionally agri- 
 cultural 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, could not be accom- 
 plished without some exceptions. But, that agricultural 
 services were, for the most part, converted into money 
 rent 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 turning into cash of
 
 70 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 agricultural produce was easily accomplished, and en- 
 abled the large proprietors without difficulty to make 
 considerable 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 country day- 
 labourers arose in England, who, although under strict 
 police regulation (Statute of Labourers),^ were yet on a 
 much better footino- 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 head of 
 cattle, gave them a security for their livelihood, which 
 is wholly wanting to the day-labourer of our time in 
 England. 
 
 As, from this abolition of compulsory agricultural ser- 
 vice, 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 improved. Undoubtedly, 
 the villanus, according to strict law, was still a serf, and 
 what he earned was for his lord ; but yet his legal posi- 
 tion, as described by Littleton, was somewhat better than 
 that laid down by Bracton. He could seek redress inde- 
 pendently, from the law against all, except his own lord, 
 and under certain circumstances he had even a right to 
 sue him.^ But that which was of still greater importance 
 than the progress of the serfs in their legal relations, 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 rent system is accom- 
 plished by the mutual agreement of the contracting 
 parties, personal serfdom cannot long be maintained. 
 Numerous records concerning manumission are possessed 
 by us, and in an equal degree, evidence of the general 
 
 1 23 Edward III. Chap. 
 
 ' John Eeeves. " History of the English Law." Dublin, 1787, vol. iii. 308, 
 et sei[.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 71 
 
 movement towards giving freedom to the serfs, is fur- 
 nished by the repeated complaints to ParUament in the 
 fourteenth century of the whok'sale absconding of the 
 " viUani," and, above all, of the support afforded to the 
 fugitive peasants by the tribunals and the towns. They 
 complained that it was scarcely possible to reclaim a 
 "villanus" who had escaped to another county, or to 
 London/ The holding of the peasant, whether it was 
 settled at a money rent, or -was still on the service system, 
 fell graelually more and more into the possession of free- 
 men. It was no longer a matter of course that the peasant 
 was a serf ; and ih.Q idea of both was no longer expressed 
 by the same expression of " villanus." Already, at the 
 commencement of the fourteenth 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 " terrse husband" ; just as in 
 Mecklenburg the earlier serf peasants were called " Haus- 
 wirthe," and it was only exceptionally that these " hus- 
 bands" were expressly noticed in their quality as " nativi 
 domini." 
 
 Even as the personal position of the peasant became 
 gradually altered in the last centuries of the Middle Ages, 
 so also the character of his tenure by "villenage" became 
 converted into tenure by " copy of the court roll," quite 
 imperceptibly, and Avithout the intervention of any legis- 
 lation. Reeves mentions that in the law 42 Edward TIL 
 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." Concerning the 
 tenants " per le verge," he says that in all essential points 
 
 ' See the Extracts from tlie Kolls of Parliament, by Tliomas Wriglit, on 
 the political condition of the English peasantry during the Middle Ages, m 
 the Archteologia, vol. xxx. London, 1844, p. 244, ct seq. 
 
 - Loc. cit. vol. iii. p. 312 and 313.
 
 73 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 tliey are of the same kind as the copyholders (sont en 
 tiel nature come tenants per le copy de court roll) ; he 
 merely distinguishes them according to the peculiar form 
 of the transfer of these possessions (per virgam) . Accord- 
 ing to him, both (as the copyholders still are) were 
 tenants " a volunt le seignior" (at the will of the lord^) ; 
 but he adds, "solonque le custome de mesme le manor" 
 (and according to the custom of the manor) ; for, in the 
 reign of Edward TV., 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 custom 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 possessions. 
 
 The same progress in agrarian history 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 specified 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 Avere for the lives of the 
 contractors (quamdiu vixerit et inde firmam bene reddi- 
 derit, or fideliter servierit). Somewhat later arise the 
 series of leases for fixed rents, which Maddox specifies in 
 the " Formulare Anglicanum," and in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, the "villani" even take 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 
 
 ' Scriven, a treatise on coiiyhold, custumary freehold, and ancient de- 
 mesne tenure, 3rd edit. Lond'. 1833. Vol. i. p. 55. A copyliolder has, in 
 judgment of law, but an estate at will. 
 
 2 " The whole of the manor lands, with all appurtenances thereunto 
 belonging."— H. A. O.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 73 
 
 developed in this point of view is shown by the quota- 
 tions in the Land registers of the annual net revenue or 
 rents of all the constituent parts of the manors. The 
 " statutum de extentis manerii " simply orders that 
 above all must be specified " quantum valet (juiijlil)et 
 acra_^^er se per annum." The lease system gained further 
 a great extension, as specified by Rogers, in the second 
 half of the fourteenth century. The imporUmt rise in 
 the rate of labour-wages after the plague^ caused the 
 system of self-farming on the part of the lords of the 
 manor, which up to that time was still the most preva- 
 lent, to be manifestly unprofitable ; hired labour had 
 become disproportionately dear, the old compulsory ser- 
 vice having been abolished. Nothing therefore remained 
 but to lease the manor lands (Rogers, 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, while, according to Rogers, in the fifteenth cen- 
 tury, 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 unprofitableness of self-farming, which led to leasing, 
 probably also led to alienations of lands to small free- 
 
 ' Such was tlie rise in wages that the King and Parliament took np the 
 matter, at is shown by the Statute of labourers, 23 Edw. Ill . " Come 
 nadgairs contre le malice de servanty qu'eux furent pareissouses et nient 
 voiilant servir apres la pestilence sanz trop outrageouses lowers prendre, 
 feut ordine par notre seignur le Roi," &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 mediseval Latin term medietare, 
 because under the system the land was cultivated under the conditions " ad 
 niedietatem fructuum." — H. A. O.
 
 74 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 holders, who 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, advantageous 
 to the position of small landed proprietors ; but at this 
 time, the turning point was reached, and the further 
 development of the movement was, in all its degrees, as 
 ruinous to their interests as it had before been favourable. 
 
 Unfortunately, the agrarian records of the fourteenth 
 and fifteenth centuries, which must exist in England in 
 great numbers, though much dispersed, are not published 
 equally with those of an earlier period, and we have not 
 been in a position to make up for this important deficiency 
 in our researches 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 p;reat ag-rarian revolution under the rule of the 
 Tudors. 
 
 Indications of this later revolution had already ap- 
 peared on two occasions ; first, 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 shows clearly that even at that time they were 
 regarded as advantageous ;) and, in the second place, 
 in the joining of the smaller peasants' possessions to 
 the larger ones. The lord of the manor had no longer 
 an interest (after the discontinuance of services) in the 
 preservation of the small peasant ; it Avas more conve- 
 nient for him to draw the same amount of rents from a 
 less number ; it was advantageous to emancipate the 
 manorial pastures from pasturage rights, and certainly 
 much easier to convert large peasant properties into 
 leasehold tenures than smaller ones. William Hale Hale 
 
 ' Qmt-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. Bluckstone.— H. A. O.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE ACES. 75 
 
 records that tlic archives of St. Paul's Church ah-eady, in 
 the fourteenth 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, subse<piently 
 so numerous, of the decreasing numbers of the small 
 landed proprietors, of the inclosures, and encroachments 
 on the pasture. Two laws from the fourth year of that 
 king's reign (1488) gave public expression to the appre- 
 hension of the agrarian revolution which was then in 
 progress. The first, cap. 16, particularly noticed by his- 
 torians, 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 con- 
 verted into pasturage, and idleness (the cause of all 
 evil) is therefore generally prevalent. Where, formerly, 
 two hundred men supported themselves by honest labour, 
 arc now to be seen only two or three shepherds." In 
 the fii^st 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 sufter 
 them to fall into decay. The second lays down, gene- 
 rally, that all dwelling and farm buildings wdiich 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 an arable husbandry. If this 
 law should be violated, the next superior feudal lord, 
 from whom the land in question was held on lease, shall 
 take half the revenue of the land, the farm buildings of 
 which have not been maintained. 
 
 These complaints may be traced throughout the six- 
 
 • Town here is manifestly used in its old sense, not of city, but dwelling- 
 place, or village.
 
 76 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 teenth century into the beginning of the seventeenth, in 
 the same manner, without interruption. 
 
 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 VHI. c. 1, where the mischief done is 
 as plainly described, as in the just cited law of Henry 
 Vn. : — " PuUino- downe and destruction of townes 
 wythin thys realme and laying to pasture landes which 
 customably have been manured and occupyed wyth 
 tyllage and husbandry." AVhen 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 VH. 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 rulings 
 were, later (24 Hemy VHI. 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 since the same period, and that generally for 
 30-50 acres of arable land, a dwelling-house should 
 be established in which a respectable man could live. 
 
 Shortly after this followed the law 25 Henry VHI. c. 
 12, 13 (1533, 4), which is especially directed against the 
 encroachments with regard to 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 exception of laymen, who upon their own inheritance 
 may possess as many as they please ; but they must not 
 carry on sheep farming on other properties." Especially,
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 77 
 
 it was dwelt upon, 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 possessors of laud, who had the right to pasture 
 their sheep with the manorial flock, their pasture riglit ; 
 and against this custom a prohibition was issued. Aljout 
 the middle of the sixteenth century the discontent at this 
 agrarian revolution arose to an immense heiglit ; 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, 1.549, 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 did Bernard 
 Gilpin raise his voice against the conduct of the gentle- 
 men : "To drive poor people out of their dwellings they 
 consider no crime, but say the land belongs to them, and 
 then cast them out of their homes like vermin. Thou- 
 sands in England now beg from door to door who for- 
 merly kept honest houses. Never (said he) were there 
 so many gentlemen and so little gentleness."^ Scory 
 (Bishop of Eoch ester), in the year 1551, presented a 
 petition to the king, in which he complains that now 
 there are only " ten ploughs where formerly there were 
 from forty to fifty." Two acres out of three have been 
 put out of culture, and where his j\Iajesty'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 population in England would soon be " more 
 
 ' The Sermons of the Rev. Father in God aiul Constant Martyr of J. Ch. 
 Hugh Latimer. 
 
 2 Extract in Strype, Eccl. Mem., voL ii. p. 441. Edit. \l-2\. Froude, 
 1. c. p. 73.
 
 78 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 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, endea- 
 voured to control the evil in a more efficient manner 
 than by laws which remained a mere dead letter. He 
 appointed an extraordinary commission, " The King's 
 Commission for the Redress of Inclosures in Oxford, 
 Berkshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Bedfordshire, 
 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 tillao'e. 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. Ruined dwellings 
 and evicted husbandmen 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 
 kino- had been oblio-ed to take into his service foreig-n 
 troops, German, Italian, and Spanish, &c. &c. He spe- 
 cifies the following five principal heads of grievances : — 
 Ruin of villao-es and aofricultural buildiuo;s ; conversion 
 of arable land into pasture ; great multitude of sheep ; 
 amalgamation 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 question only 
 
 ' And by their natural logic tliey would reason, " liow tli.ese conjugat?e, 
 these yoke-i'ellows, gentleman and geutlenes should Vie banished so far 
 asunder." Strype, vol. ii. part ii. p. 1.30. — H. A. 0.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 7!j 
 
 being of such inclosures by which the riglits of others 
 suffered, when " houses of husbandry" were pulled down, 
 or arable laud converted to pasture. 
 
 The deplorable and resultless issue of this extraordinar)' 
 commission, which was greeted with great rejoicing by 
 the country people, is sufficiently well known. 80 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 commis- 
 sioners ; 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 household ; 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, pro- 
 posed 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, how- 
 ever, with the petition of the commission, he also brought 
 three bills into Parliament : the first had for its ol)ject 
 the rebuilding of the demolished houses and the preser- 
 vation of tillage ; the second was directed against raising 
 the prices of the necessaries of life, 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, 
 
 ' Strype, Memorials, vol ii. p. 172. 
 
 ^ An Extra^.t from the Petition, according to MS. Domestic Echvanl 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 
 
 was tlirown out by the Upper House, and tlie 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 disturbances 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, insurrections of the peasants 
 occurred in Oxfordshire, and other places in central Eng- 
 land, 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 examina- 
 tion of certayne ordinary complaints," &c., by W. S., 
 gentleman, of London, 1.581.^ In this dialogue, the 
 inclosures, as the crying evil of the times, were discussed 
 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 con- 
 tinues, instead 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 than twenty under grain culti- 
 vation. In like manner the doctor (the leader of the 
 discussion) agrees that the realm threatens to be in a 
 highly dangerous position through the rapidly increasing 
 
 ' Parliament. Hist. i. p. 59, and Strj'pe, Menior. ii. 134. 
 
 * See concerning this dialogue the author's essay in the " Zeitschrift i'lir 
 die Gesanimte Staatswissenschaft," 1863, vol xix. p. 369, et seq.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 81 
 
 depopulation of the country, the number of idle and 
 unemployed persons, and the disturbances and insurrec- 
 tions 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 hus- 
 bandry, which had tended to displace the small tillage 
 husbandmen. Different circumstances, however, and 
 witnesses, show us clearly that this, at least for the most 
 part, was not the case. The low price of wheat alone, 
 concerning which nearly all the authorities of the time 
 complain, is sufhcient 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 to any great extent 
 by a permanent 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 mode of cultivation which 
 then appears to a great extent to have replaced 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 prescrip- 
 tion for the agrarian changes which are advantageous on 
 a manor. Not only does he lay great stress on the point 
 that it is desirable to separate the manor land from the 
 agrarian community in which it was often husbanded 
 with the tenants' lands, on the ground that it would gain 
 much in value as a separate inclosure (chap. 2) ; but lie 
 has a whole chapter (40) on how a township which is 
 worth twenty marks a year may be made worth £20 
 
 o
 
 8;> ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 sterling : " Every village has now three fields for wheat 
 tillage, one common pasture for horses, one for the rest 
 of the cattle, and a meadow." He proposes that each 
 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 par- 
 cels, the regulated community of use, and the common 
 pasture shall cease. In this manner each would possess 
 
 i 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 
 
 I quantity of the inclosed pasture land should be broken 
 up for corn cultivation. Thus the manure of the grazing 
 
 i cattle would be utilized for the arable land, and " reist 
 grounde" would be always there, which would grow 
 much corn with little manure ; there would be a saving 
 of shepherds' wages, and a gain of much wood from the 
 live hedges which separated the several inclosures one 
 from another, and which would afford shelter to cattle 
 from the weather, &c. &c. Hence the recommendations 
 did not point towards a permanent pasture, but, as 
 
 1 it appears, to a rather irregular convertible husbandry. 
 Some ten years later, Tusser (in his Five hundred points 
 of good husbandry)^ describes still more plainly the 
 field-grass husbandry as the one prevailing on inclosed 
 lands. 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 pos- 
 sible way the old village husbandry — " it not only dete- 
 riorated produce, but induced idleness, thieving," &c. &c. 
 " In the districts in which it prevailed the country 
 
 ' The book ai^peared for the first time in 1557, under the title of "A 
 hundredth good pointes of husbandry " ; and then in a number of new 
 editions with additions and corrections by the author, then called " Five 
 hundredth pointes of good husbandry " ; the author used the edition of 
 William Mavor, London, 1812.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 83 
 
 population were much poorer than in those where there 
 were inclosures ; a poor man who possessed two acres of 
 inclosed land, was much better off than if he had twenty 
 in an uninclosed state. "^ Tlie ordinary succession of 
 crops on uninclosed land was, according to Tusscr, 
 three-field husbandry, with compulsory rotation, and 
 common pastm^age,^ and also exceptionally two-field 
 husbandry ; on inclosed land, on the other hand, he 
 praises the freedom of choice which rests with the land- 
 lord,'^ and mentions a succession of crops, for a consider- 
 able time, fallow, barley, peas, and wheat, and then either 
 
 ' Especially see chap. liii. A comparison between champion country and 
 severaU. 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 be. 
 " 7. More plenty of mutton and beef, 
 Corn, 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 held, 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 knows 
 
 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. xvii. : — 
 
 " First rye, and then barley, the champion says, 
 Or w-heat 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 t'other with reason may otherwise say." 
 
 * Manure, compost. — H. A. O. 
 
 G 2
 
 84 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 fallow again or laying down in pasture, and a lengthened 
 use for grass crops (October's Husbandry, cli. 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 exhausted 
 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 
 laying down the land to permanent pasture ; on the con- 
 trary, according to this author, tillage was the rule on 
 inclosed lands, and the conversion of arable land into 
 pasture was merely temporary, which indeed is a pecu- 
 liarity of convertible husbandry. We may mention here, 
 incidentally, that Tusser describes 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, espe- 
 cially when it sprung up under the then prevailing state 
 of affairs in England, must have obtained a decisive pre- 
 ponderance over that which had been in use up to that 
 time. The fundamental principle of convertible husbandry 
 is the combination and reciprocal operation of corn culti- 
 vation and cattle breeding on a large scale, and which is 
 realized in the highest degree in modern agriculture by 
 interposing a green or pulse crop between every two 
 white crops. It was the results of this system which, at 
 the beginning of this century, first turned the attention 
 of judicious German farmers to England and the Norfolk 
 four crops. The alternation of corn cultivation and cattle 
 OTazino' on the same land is alike advantao;eous 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 pre- 
 liminary climatic conditions of this hus1)andry exist, are
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. .s5 
 
 much stronger and of a better c|iialily (lian those on 
 the constant pasture of the three-fiekl system. In the 
 first pasture years hay-harvesting is frecpiently so abun- 
 dant that a better supply of winter food for the cattle is 
 obtained. Tf even the pasture after a time of free grazing 
 should have deteriorated, a fallow year would follow, 
 with a dee]) and repeated ploughing, and the returns of 
 the wheat harvest on such land would be much riclier 
 than would ever have been obtained by a three-field hus- 
 bandry. 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 pas- 
 tures were neglected and poor. Above all, a scarcity of 
 winter fodder existed in the hio-hest deo-ree. For this 
 reason the meadows suited for hay-growing had a dispro- ; 
 portionately 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 aff'ord the most precarious 
 nourishment, which, with straw food, hardly sustained 
 them throuo'h the winter. 
 
 In Germany the opinion is now prevalent since the 
 researches of Thlinen, that the regular convertible hus- 
 bandry was a much more productive system than the r 
 three-field husbandry, and therefore it was only possible I 
 to make the transition from one to the other when the 
 produce , of the land was at a high price. But the 
 researches of Thlinen related only to the husbandry 
 of Mecklenlmrg as it existed in his time. It is rather 
 an essential property of convertible husbandry that 
 it can assume with ease different grades of intensity 
 (Intensivitiit). By lengthening the pasture time, and
 
 86 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 thereby the time of the whole successions of crops, the 
 cost of cultivation can be lessened at pleasure. The sur- 
 face of the fallow which is to be ploughed, and of the 
 fields which are to be cultivated each season, in relation 
 to the whole, and also the amount of labour which is 
 thereby expended on a given extent of land, must be 
 indeed smaller, the more the grass or pasture years are 
 prolonged. 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 convertible husbandry appear advantageous. 
 
 There are, however, two circumstances which are 
 indispensable to such a transition. First, the climate 
 must be favourable to grass growth which requires con- 
 siderable atmospheric moisture, and it is only under such 
 a condition that after several wheat crops the ground can 
 be immediately laid down with profit for grass culture. 
 Where this condition is 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 Germany, therefore, the principal lands 
 which have been used for convertible husbandry are coast- 
 lands, such as Holstein and Mecklenburg ; or mountain 
 districts with a considerable rainfall. But the above 
 requirement is exactly fulfilled in the sea-climate of 
 England, so that it is not easy to explain how a three- 
 field husbandry could have been so long pursued instead 
 of a field system so especially indicated by the local 
 conditions. For this reason it appears to us pro- 
 bable that the system of a permanent separation of pas- 
 ture and arable land was imported by a people whose 
 former place of residence had a continental climate, and 
 we may presume that these were the Anglo-Saxons. The 
 movement then of the sixteenth century was merely a 
 return to the natural state of agriculture suited to 
 England. 
 
 A second momentum, which perhaps is not always an 
 indispensable condition of the convertible system, but 
 which may always be designated as especially advan- 
 tageous in a lower degree of culture, is a favourable con-
 
 UF TILE MIDDLE AGES. S7 
 
 dition for the sale of the produce of the cattle hrecdinu; 
 in comparison with the demand for corn. With a dense 
 popuhxtiou and high prices of all agricultural [)roduc(3, 
 cattle breeding on a large scale, which is connected with 
 this husbandry system, can be made to pay on account 
 of its favourable reaction on corn culture ; but with a 
 more extensive husbandry, and a low price of every i)ro- 
 duce of the soil, this expensive way of raising the corn 
 crop can never be advantageous. In such a case it will 
 be always better to cultivate a larger part of the soil 
 with corn (with a light manuring) than indirectly to 
 raise the produce by fodder cultivation, cattle breed- 
 ing, and thick manuring on a smaller extent of ground. 
 The convertible husbandry, 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 advantage over the three-field husbandry. 
 
 In this respect the circumstances of the times were 
 especially favourable to the transition. 
 
 At the end of the Middle Ages, and above all, in 
 the sixteenth century, money payments (geldwirth- 
 schaft) (the proportionately early use of which in 
 England we have already alluded to) made most rapid 
 progress. The division of labour between town and 
 country was at this time already supplanted, in a measure, 
 by an international division of labour. The small towns, 
 whose industrial produce had hitherto been consumed by 
 the country, which gave back its surplus of agricultural 
 produce in return, began to fall into decay ; and in 
 everything which had any relation to an interchange of 
 commodities between country and town they Avere sup- 
 planted by foreign trade and industry. It occurs in the 
 above-mentioned dialogue (fol. 47. 48), " that, what was 
 formerly produced in the provincial towns, every one 
 now obtains from I.ondon or from foreign countries ; " 
 and this state of things is lamented in many old publica- 
 tions of the time, as well as the prevalent consumption 
 of foreign produce, the decay of the old corj^iorate towns,
 
 88 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 aud the enormous growth of London, which were matters 
 which also then excited the grave consideration of the 
 Legislature.^ But tlie more foreign wares were in use, so 
 much the more naturally must the demand be increased 
 for those inland products which would sell in foreign 
 parts, and the most important article of export in Eng- 
 ■ land during the sixteenth century, as well as nearly 
 throughout the Middle Ages, was wool. Tin and lead 
 also, skins, hides, and leather, beer and cheese, which are 
 partly also the produce of cattle breeding, are mentioned 
 as articles of export about this time ; Ijut all these toge- 
 ther, with perhaps the exception of tin, were of minor 
 importance when compared with wool and w^ooUen fabrics. 
 Their production must also have been much increased as 
 foreign articles became more and more in demand from 
 increasing 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 must be added which was 
 favourable to the relative increase in the price of wool. 
 Li the second half of the sixteenth century the general 
 ■ rise in prices which followed the discovery of silver 
 . wealth in America principally commenced, and reached 
 the highest point in Western Europe, When such a 
 country as England was first affected by this rise in 
 prices, it must have first 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 labour. Durino; the whole time of 
 the transition, the increased quantity of silver which was 
 
 ' See on the decay of the corporate towns in the Statute-book, introduc- 
 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 circumstance, 
 which certainly co-operated thereto. His opinion is, that the exclusive privi- 
 leges of the guilds impeded the increase of industry in the ancient towns, and 
 forced it into the new districts which were not endowed with municipal rights. 
 In addition to the revival of London in that point of view, he continues, 
 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," 11. pp. 166, 227.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 89 
 
 obtained for the articles of export, operated as a preniiiiiu 
 on their production, in comparison with such A\'ares for 
 which at that time there was no foreign demand, sudi 
 as wheat.^ Never, remarks J. Smith, had the English 
 wool trade risen to a greater height than in the time 
 from Edward VI. to the death of Queen Elizabeth,^ and 
 hence the frequent complaints, which have been already 
 referred to, of the dearness of wool and the cheapness of 
 corn, w^hich W. S. proposed to counteract by prohibiting 
 the export of wool and allowing freedom to that of corn, 
 which up to that time, as a rule, had been prohibited. 
 Unfortunately, we must renounce the wish of following 
 statistically this rise in prices. The statements concern- 
 ing the prices of wool which we were enabled to collect 
 were too imperfect, and especially 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 Rogers will soon offer trustworthy materials, 
 from the registers of the Oxford Colleges, more reliable 
 than that already treated of, for the period of the four- 
 teenth century, in which the price of wool, in its relation 
 to the estimation of prices, can be very little depended 
 upon, on account of the exceeding difference in the weight 
 of the " petra,"^ by which weight wool was commonly 
 sold. — ( Vide Appendix B.) 
 
 Since, in the three-field husbandry, there was no room 
 to farm in the direction of cattle breeding, it was neces- 
 sary to have recourse rather to the convertible, or on 
 occasions to pure-grass husbandry, and thus the common 
 village husbandry in its old form, could not possibly 
 
 • See Helferich on the periodical variation in the value of the precious 
 metals. Nuremburg, 1843, p. 90. 
 
 2 Chronicon Rusticum Commerciale, or Memoirs of Wool, by John Smith, 
 1 vol., London, 1747, p. 127. 
 
 3 The " petra," our stone, ^vas a weight among the Anglo-Saxons, the 
 value of which, vaguelv estimated, was about 141b. Then as now, it 
 varied for different wares-meat, 8lb. ; glass, nib. ; cheese 16lb. ; hemp, 
 321b. There can be little doubt that in rude ages, as is the case now m 
 India, a round stone was made use of instead of a regular weight, hence the 
 name. — H. A. O.
 
 90 ON THE AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 adapt itself to the new conditions. In other places, it 
 is true, there were villages with a common convertible 
 husbandry, as, for example, in Holstein ; and it is with 
 justice that Hanssen has latterly denounced the very 
 frequent identification of village and three-field hus- 
 bandry. But, in order to accomplish such a transition, 
 a complete exchange of all the plots of ground, and a 
 new partitioning of both the arable land and pasture, 
 woukl 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 estab- 
 lishing a simultaneous 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. Inclosures, 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 immense difliculty of such a measure, without 
 any fixed legislative enactments, must speak for itself,^ 
 and this was without doubt the reason that in so many 
 places in Europe the village and three-field husbandry 
 was preserved so completely unchanged from century to 
 century. 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 enfranchising 
 the same from the pasturage rights of the commoners 
 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. 
 
 » In fact, the Legislature of those times favoured the partitioning of the 
 land, which was then in a state of veritable community and copartnership. 
 The 'laws, 31 Henry VIII. c. 1, and 32 Henry VIII. c. 32, enact that joint- 
 tenants, as well as tenants in common, can be bound by a writ " de par- 
 titione facienda," to be 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 were opposed to the pasture rights of the common, these laws did not 
 apply.
 
 UF THE MIDDLE AGES. 91 
 
 there only remained feasible, the formation of the larger 
 landed properties, and the separation of them from the 
 village community (which, as we have already mentioned, 
 commenced in the Middle Ages), as a means of cariying 
 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, 
 when that class among them which stood in the most un- 
 favourable position in a legal point of view, had obtained 
 a protection at law for their rights of property. In spite 
 of this, these copyholders were driven in great numljers 
 from their rural hides.^ When an extraordinary Koyal 
 Commission like that of the Protector,^ ordered to inquire 
 
 ' The close connection which arose in England between the introduction 
 of the field-grass husbandry and the supplanting the small landed proprietor, 
 also showed itself in a precisely similar manner in the agrarian liistory 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 field- 
 grass husbandry on inclosed farms gave rise to the supplanting of the pea- 
 sants on an extreme scale. Vide on this subject "Agriculture and the 
 Peasant" in the History of Mecklenburg, by Ernst Boll, Neubrandenburg, 
 1856, vol. 2nd, p. 463, et seq. (Die Bauern und die Landwirthschaft in der 
 Geschichte Mecklenburgs.) 
 
 ^ Here and there certainly there is a question of buying up the small 
 plotB of land. Vide, e.g. a contemporaneous poem on unsatiable purchasers 
 by Strype, Memor. I. 132. 
 This poem is as follows : 
 
 " An unreasonable rich man dyd ryd 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, quothe he ; 
 Mary, maister, quod the boy, nren say over al. 
 That your purchase is great, but your liousehold is smal. 
 Why, Jack, quod thys riche man, what have they to do 1 
 Would they have me to purchase, and keep great house too i 
 I cannot tell, quod the boy, what maketh them to brawle, ^^ 
 But they say that you purchase the Devil, his dam, and all. 
 
 o 
 
 SruYi'E. 
 H. A. o. 
 
 => Somerset.— H. A. 0.
 
 92 ON THE ALiRlCULTURAL COMMUNITY 
 
 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 Judica- 
 ture 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 established by custom of the manors. The small 
 copyholders were not in a position to establish such rights 
 before learned tribunals, when opposed by experienced 
 advocates. 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 VHI. and the following years, 
 while so great a revolution in Church and State was in 
 progress, could not have been favourable for the support 
 of rights which were dependent upon custom. A change 
 so sudden as the secularization of the monastery proper- 
 ties, and which appeared to the mass of the population 
 to be so unjust, must have shaken the respect of the 
 rural population for all traditional rules relative to pro- 
 perty. Thus, a publication Avhich appeared in the year 
 1.546 complains that the new possessors of church pro- 
 perty generally declared that, by the secularization, 
 all the old rights of property of the copyholders were 
 extinguished. ' The possessors, according to the custom 
 of the manor, were obliged cither to give up their 
 holdings, or to retain them on temporary leases.^ The 
 modern agriculture commencing at that time tended 
 without doubt greatly towards a state of pure leasing 
 instead of the mediceval relations between the lord of the 
 soil and the farmer, as well as to a dissolution of the 
 
 ' A supplication of the poor commoners to the king, given in Strype, 
 vol. i. p. 398, et seq.
 
 OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 93 
 
 agrarian commuuity ; and the Legislature came power- 
 fully to the aid of these innovations. By 21 Henry Vlll. 
 c. 15, leases, although not in writing, obtained a statutory 
 recognition ; and 82 Henry VIII. c. 28 (enabling statute) 
 also conferred permission to the tenant-in-tail to con- 
 clude 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 themselves 
 at 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 have been 
 already referred to, and it has also been shown that the 
 smaller landed proprietors had certainly in no wise com- 
 pletely disappeared in the sixteenth century. The free- 
 holders had for the most part maintained their holdings, 
 and the copyholders had not nearly all been supplanted, 
 or converted into leaseholders. Still, in the beginninti- 
 of the seventeenth century. Coke could say in a well- 
 known judgment, that the third part of England con- 
 sisted of copyhold. But the revolution which then began 
 has continued even into our times. Its progress has been 
 sometimes cj[uicker, sometimes slower, and gradually the 
 connection which there was at the commencement be- 
 tween the two phenomena — inclosures and peasant 
 eviction — has been less close ; but it still remains uumis- 
 takeable, that among the many circumstances which 
 have caused the complete disappearance of the medioeval 
 peasant class, the first and most important was the disso- ( 
 lution of the old communities in land. A transmutation . 
 of the agricultural association, instead of its abrogation, 
 would have placed the small holders in a position to 
 adopt the same mode of proceeding as the larger proprie- 
 tors, and given them a position in the community, to 
 balance the economic and social power of the great lords 
 of the soil. Also a thorough consolidation and new par- ' 
 titioning of the acreage, with an establishment of separate 
 husbandry, would have been more favourable than the 
 
 Reeves, 1. cit. vol. iv. j). 232, et seq.
 
 94 AGRICULTURAL COMMUNITY OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 course which the reform took, and l6ng adhered to. For, 
 a simultaneous separation of all properties would at least 
 have had the advantage of making independent, and 
 collecting into one spot both the small and the larger 
 possessions. 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 the 
 several communities, were generally unfavourable to the 
 small properties,^ and besides, as the enormous law 
 expenses fell much more heavily on the smaller landed 
 properties than on the larger, it is not to be wondered at, 
 that when in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, 
 the large fortunes acquired by trade were sought to be 
 invested in land and soil, and the purchasers were con- 
 tented to receive the smallest interest for their invest- 
 ments, that 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. 
 
 ' 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, committees sitting in this House on private bills, 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 riglits of the 
 poor man, because by reason of his very poverty he is unable 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.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Fenus agitarc, et in usiiras extendere, ignotum : 
 ideoque magis servatur quam si vetitum esset. Agri pro 
 •numero cultorimi, ab imiversis per vices occupantur, quos 
 mox inter se secundum dignationem partiuntur : facili- 
 tatem partiendi camporum spatia prsestant. 
 
 Arva per annos mutant ; et superest agcr : nee enim 
 cum ubertate et amplitudine soli labore contendunt, ut 
 pomaria conserunt, et prata separent, et hortos rigent : 
 sola terras seges imperatur. 
 
 Unde annum quoque ipsum non in totidem degerunt 
 species : hiems, et ver, et oestas intellectum ac vocabula 
 habent : autumni perinde nomem ac bona ignorantur. — 
 Tacitus XXVI. Germania. 
 
 Pro numero cultorum — per vices. 
 
 It is only by fresh divisions, that 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.
 
 96 APPENDIX. 
 
 Agri : This T 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. 
 
 h. 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 in 
 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 Grermanic names of the seasons, even 
 in the present English ; autumn being of Latin origin. 
 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 
 well 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, in 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. [t7 
 
 That tliere was much joint occupancy, except on tlic 
 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 impli(^s 
 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 
 difficulty attached to the words " another man's falloio." 
 What could such a fallow be '? 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 aftergrowth 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 all, 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 olf 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 
 
 H
 
 98 APPENDIX. 
 
 much the property of the original owner, in the interval 
 between two tilths, 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 Csesar 
 rather than Tacitus is responsible, and limiting the 
 account in Coesar 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 p>artitio the distribution of 
 the land of such districts after the conquest had become 
 complete, the possession assured, and the conversion of 
 chieftains and captains into comparatively peaceable 
 settlers had become practicable I Such a viev/ 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 descrip- 
 tions of land, having been subjected during successive 
 ages to specified modes of occupancy under ancient and 
 strict reo;ulations 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." 
 
 H. A. 0.
 
 APPENDIX. 99 
 
 B. 
 
 Swiss historians have recently sliown, that in the four 
 cantons which border on the Lake of Lucerne, cattle- 
 breeding and pasture-farming had superseded tillage in 
 the latter centuries of the Middle Ages in a greater 
 degree even than in England. (See T. Martin Kiem, in 
 the " Geschichtsfreund des historischen Vereins der fiinf 
 Orte der Urschweiz/' Bd. XXL (18G6), and Dr. G. Meyer 
 von Knonau " Die Verdranfjjunfr des Ackerbaus durch 
 Alpenwirthschaft in Schweizerischen Hochgebirgs tha- 
 lern," in the "jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclub." The 
 origin of this change in Switzerland was not quite iden- 
 tical, neither was it followed by precisely similar results 
 as that in England ; but in both countries the develop- 
 ment of an external commerce contributed much to 
 facilitate the agrarian revolution. 
 
 C. 
 
 Note. — Convertible Husbandry. 
 
 The word in German which I have rendered by con- 
 vertible husbandry is " Feldgraswirthschaft." 
 
 In the first edition of this translation I had translated 
 it literally, fieldgrass husbandry ; but, as this is not an 
 English technical term, it led to misapprehension; for 
 which reason I have now used an expression which 
 explains as nearly as possible the German appellation. 
 
 In Germany the regular fieldgrass husbandry consists 
 in a regulated interchange between plots of arable land 
 and pasture ; so that, for example, if a farm were divided 
 into twelve plots, of which every year one arable plot 
 was to be converted into pasture, and one of pasture 
 broken up for arable purposes, each separate plot of
 
 100 APPENDIX. 
 
 land would then remain five to six years pasture and 
 five to six years arable. 
 
 It is well known that, on account of the great dif- 
 ference in the nature of soils and circumstances of 
 climate, &c., great variety of systems of successions of 
 crops prevail in England ; but the above general de- 
 scription of German " Feldgraswirthschaft " sufficiently 
 shows that it is similar in all essential points to the con- 
 vertible husbandry which in this country first originated 
 in Scotland. 
 
 Wilde Feldgraswirthschaft, or irregular convertible 
 husbandry, consists in an irregular interchange of the 
 several plots from arable to pasture, and from pasture to 
 arable — an example of which is quoted from Marshall 
 at page 11. 
 
 H. A. 0. 
 
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