SCATTERED STRIPS IN OPEN-FIELDS 66 "1 gores, 25 fothers, "2 and is, pieces broken off, "pightels," The arable fields were fenced against the live-stock from seedtime to harvest, and the intermixed strips were cultivated for the separate use of individuals, subject to the compulsory rotation by which each of the three fields was cropped. On Lammas Day separate user ended, and common rights recommenced; hence fields occupied in this manner were, and are, called Lammas Lands or "half-year lands." After harvest the hayward removed the fences, and the live-stock of the community wandered over the fields before the common herdsman, shepherd, or swineherd. The herdsman, in the reign of Henry VIII., received 8d. a year for every head of cattle entrusted to his care, and the swineherd 4d. for every head of swine. When sheep were folded on the cultivated land, each farmer provided, during the winter months, his own fold and fodder for his flock. Richard Hooker, while he held the country living of Drayton Beauchamp in Buckinghamshire, was found by two of his former pupils, "like humble and innocent Abel, tending his small allotment of sheep in a common field." That no occupier might find all his land fallow in the same year, every one had strips in each of the three arable fields. If the holding of the open-field farmer consisted of thirty acres, there would thus be ten acres in each field. In other words, he would have ten acres under wheat and rye, ten acres under spring crops, and ten acres fallow. The same care was taken to make the divisions equal in agricultural value, so that each man might have his fair proportion of the best and worst land. To divide equally the good and bad, well and ill situated soil, the bundle of strips allotted in each of the three fields did not lie together, but was intermixed and scattered. 66 In the lowest part of the land-if possible along a stream-lay the "ings," carrs," "leazes," or meadows, annually cut up into lots or doles, and put up for hay. These doles were fenced off to be mown for the separate use of individuals either from Candlemas (February 2), or, more usually, from St. Gregory's Day (March 12) 1 As in Kensington Gore. Cf. Chaucer (Prologue, 530): 'A ploughman was his brother, That hadde y-lad of dong ful many a fother," L where the word is generally taken to mean a load. to Midsummer Day; from July to February, or later, they were open, common pasturage. Sometimes the plots, which varied in size from a half-acre downwards, went with the arable holdings, so that the same man annually received the same portion of meadow. Sometimes the plots were balloted for every year. Each lot was distinguished by a name, such as the cross, crane's foot, or peel, i.e. baker's shovel, which will often explain puzzling field-names. Corresponding marks were thrown into a hat or bag and drawn by a boy. This balloting continued up to the last century in Somersetshire, and still continues at Yarnton in Oxfordshire.1 After the hay had been cut and carried, the meadows reverted to common occupation, and were grazed indiscriminately by the live-stock of the village, till they were again fenced off, allotted, and put up for hay. On the outskirts of the arable fields nearest to the village lay one or more "hams" or stinted pastures, in which a regulated number of live-stock might graze, and therefore supplying superior feed. Brandersham, Smithsham, Wontnersham, Herdsham, Constable's Field, Dog Whipper's Land, Barber's Furlong, Tinker's Field, Sexton's Mead, suggest that sometimes special allotments were made to those who practised trades of such general utility as the stock-brander, the blacksmith, the mole-catcher, the cowherd, the constable, the barber, the tinker, and the sexton. The dog-whipper's usefulness is less obvious; but possibly he was employed to prevent the live-stock from being harried by dogs. Even the spiritual wants of the village were sometimes supplied in the same way. Parson's Close and Parson's Acre are not uncommon. It is significant that no schoolmasters seem to have been provided for by allotments of land. Besides the open arable fields, the meadows, and the stinted hams, there were the common pastures, fringed by the untilled wastes which were left in their native wildness. These wastes provided fern and heather for litter, bedding, or thatching; small wood for hurdles; tree-loppings for winter browse of live-stock; fuzre and turves for fuel; larger timber for fencing, implements, and building; mast, acorns, and other food for the swine. Most of these smaller rights were made the subject of fixed annual payments to the manorial lord; but the right of cutting fuel was generally attached to the occupation, not only of arable land, but 1 As described by R. H. Gretton in The Economic Journal for March, 1912. THE COMMON-PASTURES 27 of cottages. The most important part of these lands were the common pastures, which were often the only grass that arable farmers could command for their live-stock. They therefore formed an integral and essential part of the village farm. No rights were exercised upon them by the general public. On the contrary, the commons were most jealously guarded by the privileged commoners against the intrusion or encroachments of strangers. The agistment of strange cattle or sheep was strictly prohibited: commoners who turned out more stock than their proper share were "presented" at the manorial courts and fined; cottages erected on the commons were condemned to be pulled down; the area within which swine might feed was carefully limited, and the swine were to be ringed.1 Those who enjoyed the grazing rights were the occupiers of arable land, whose powers of turning out stock were, in theory, proportioned to the size of their arable holdings, and the occupiers of certain cottages, which commanded higher rents in consequence of the privilege. It was on these commons that the cattle and sheep of the village were fed. Every morning the cattle were collected, probably by the sound of a horn, and driven to the commons by the village herdsman along drift ways, which were enclosed on either side by moveable or permanent fences to keep the animals from straying on to the arable land. In the evening they were driven back, each animal returning to its own shelter, as the herd passed up the village street. Similarly, the sheep were driven by the village shepherd to the commons by day, and folded at night on the wheat fallows. Sheep were the manure carriers, and were prized as much for their folding quality as for their fleeces. In some districts they were kept almost entirely for their agricultural value to the arable land. Until the winter they were penned in the common fold on the fallows or the stubbles. After the fallows had been ploughed, and before the crops on the other fields were cleared, they had only the commons. During winter each commoner was obliged to find hay for his sheep and his own fold, the common shepherd penning and folding them so as gradually to cover the whole area. The open-field system, thus briefly sketched with its arable, meadow, and permanent pasture land, prevailed at some time or 1 The Regulations for "Common Rights at Cottenham and Stretham" are printed by Dr. Cunningham in the Camden Miscellany, vol. xii. (1910), pp. 173-296. other throughout England, except perhaps in the south-west. The following description of the crofters' holdings in Skye in 1750 might have been written, with but few alterations, of half the cultivated area of England in the eighteenth century: "A certain number of tacksmen formed a copartnery and held a tract of land, or township, for which they paid tribute to the chief, and each member was jointly and severally responsible. The grazing was in common. All the arable land was divided into ridges, assigned annually by lot among the partners. Each might have a dozen or more of these small ridges, and no two contiguous except by accident; the object being to give each partner a portion of the better and inferior land. The copartner appears to have had cotters under him, for whose work he paid." The prevalence of the system may still be traced with more or less distinctness in rural England. The counties in which it was most firmly established are counties of villages, not of scattered farmsteads and hamlets. Turf balks and lynches record the time when " every rood of ground maintained its man." Irregular and regular fences, narrow lanes and wide highways, crooked and straight roads, respectively suggest the piecemeal or the wholesale enclosure of common fields. The waving ridges on thousands of acres of ancient pasture still represent the swerve of the cumbrous village plough with its team of eight oxen. The age of the hedgerow timber sometimes tells the date of the change. The pages appropriated to hedges by agricultural writers of the eighteenth century indicate the era of the abolition of open fields, and the minuteness of their instructions proves that the art of making hedges was still in its infancy. The scattered lands of ordinary farms, compared with the compact "court,' hall," or manor" farm, recall the fact that the lord's demesne was once the only permanent enclosure. The crowding together of the rural population in villages betrays the agrarian partnership, as detached farmsteads and isolated labourers' dwellings indicate the system by which it has been supplanted. Accurate comparison between the conditions of the rural population in the thirteenth and twentieth centuries seems impossible. Calculations based on the prices of commodities, involving, as they must, the translation of the purchasing power of mediaeval money into its modern equivalent, are necessarily guess-work. They are also to a great extent irrelevant, for few of the necessaries of life were ever bought by the cultivators of the soil, and whether the THE SELF-SUPPORTING VILLAGES 29 corn that they raised was fetching 3s. or 6s. the quarter in a distant market made little difference to the inhabitants of villages. They grew it for their own consumption. Owing to difficulties of communication, every village raised its own bread-supply. Hence a great extent of land, which from a farming point of view formed an excessive proportion of the total area, was tilled for corn, however unsuited it might be for arable cultivation. As facilities of transport increased, this necessity became less and less paramount. Land best adapted to pasture no longer required to be ploughed, but might be put to the use for which it was naturally fitted. Improvements in means of communication were thus among the changes which helped to extinguish village farms. But for the time, and so long as the open-field system prevailed, farming continued to be in the main a self-sufficing industry. Except for the payment of rent, little coin was needed or used in rural districts. Parishes till the middle of the eighteenth century remained what they were in the thirteenth century-isolated and self-supporting. The inhabitants had little need of communication even with their neighbours, still less with the outside world. The fields and the live-stock provided their necessary food and clothing. Whatever wood was required for building, fencing, and fuel was supplied from the wastes. Each village had its mill, and nearly every house had its oven and brewing kettle. Women spun and wove wool into coarse cloth, and hemp or nettles into linen; men tanned their own leather. The rough tools required for cultivation of the soil, and the rude household utensils needed for the comforts of daily life, were made at home. In the long winter evenings, farmers, their sons, and their servants carved the wooden spoons, the platters, and the beechen bowls. They fitted and riveted the bottoms to the horn mugs, or closed, in coarse fashion, the leaks in the leathern jugs. They plaited the osiers and reeds into baskets and into "weeles" for catching fish; they fixed handles to the scythes, rakes, and other tools; cut the flails from holly or thorn, and fastened them with thongs to the staves; shaped the teeth for rakes and harrows from ash or willow, and hardened them in the fire; cut out the wooden shovels for casting the corn in the granary ; fashioned ox-yokes and bows, forks, racks, and rack-staves; twisted willows into scythe-cradles, or into traces and other harness gear. Travelling carpenters, smiths, and tinkers visited detached farmhouses and smaller villages, at rare intervals, to perform |