Another circ.u.mstance seems of yet greater import: even within the boundaries of one and the same community the equality was an agrarian one and did not amount to a strict correspondence in figures. It was obviously impossible to cut up the land among the holdings in such a way as to make every one contain quite the same number of acres as the rest.
In the Cartulary of Ramsey it is stated, that in one of the manors the virgate contains sometimes forty-eight acres and sometimes less[481].
The Huntingdon Hundred Rolls mentions a locality where some of the half-virgates have got houses on their plots and some have not[482]. In the Dorsetshire manor of Newton, belonging to Glas...o...b..ry, we find a reduction of the duties of one of the virgates because it is a small one[483]. A curious instance is supplied by the same Glas...o...b..ry survey as to the Wiltshire manor of Christian Malford: one of the virgates was formed out of two former virgates, which were found insufficient to support two separate households[484].
This last case makes it especially clear that the object was to make the shares on the same pattern in point of quality, and not of mere quant.i.ty. It is only to be regretted that manorial surveys, hundred rolls, and other doc.u.ments of the same kind take too little heed of such variations, and consider the whole arrangement merely in regard to the interests of the landlord. For this purpose a rough quant.i.tative statement was sufficient. They give very sparing indications as to the facts underlying the system of holdings; their aim is to reduce all relations to artificial uniformity in order to make them a fitter basis for the distribution of rents and labour services. But very little attention is required to notice a very great difference between such figures and reality. In most of the cases, when the virgate is described in its component parts, we come across irregularities. Again, each component part is more or less irregular, because instead of the acres and half-acres the real ground presents strips of a very capricious shape. And so we must come to the conclusion, that the hide, the virgate, the bovate, in short every holding mentioned in the surveys, appears primarily as an artificial, administrative, and fiscal unit which corresponds only in a very rough way to the agrarian reality.
[Acre ware.]
This conclusion coincides with the most important fact, that the reckoning of acres in regard to the plough-team is entirely different in the treatises on husbandry from what it is in the manorial records drawn up for the purpose of an a.s.sessment of duties and payments. Walter of Henley and Fleta reckon 180 acres to the plough in a three-field system, and 160 in a two-field system. Now these figures are quite exceptional in surveys, whereas 120 acres is most usual without any distinction as to the course of rotation of crops. The relation between the three-field ploughland of 180 acres and the hide of 120 suggests the inference that the official a.s.sessment started from the prevalence of the three-field rotation, and disregarded the fallow. But the inference is hardly sufficient to explain the facts of the case. The way towards a solution of the problem is indicated by the terminology of the Ely surveys in the British Museum. These doc.u.ments very often mention virgates and full yardlands of twelve acres _de ware_; on the other hand, the Court Rolls from Edward I"s time till Elizabeth"s, and a survey of the reign of Edward III, show the virgate to consist of twenty-four acres[485]. The virgate _de ware_ corresponds usually to one-half of the real virgate; I say usually, because in one case it is reckoned to contain eighteen acres in the place of twenty-four mentioned in the rolls and the later survey[486]. Such "acre ware" are to be found, though rarely, in other manors besides those of Ely minster[487]. The contradiction between the doc.u.ments may be taken at first glance to originate in a difference between the number of acres under actual tillage and the number of acres comprised in the holding: perhaps the first reckoning leaves out the fallow. This explanation has been tried by Mr. O. Pell, the present owner of one of the Ely manors: he started it in connexion with an etymology which brought together "ware" and "war.e.c.t.u.m": on this a.s.sumption twelve acres appeared instead of twenty-four, because the fallow of the two-field system was left out of the reckoning. But this reading of the evidence does not seem satisfactory; it is one-sided at the least. Why should the holding from which the "war.e.c.t.u.m" has been left out get its name from the "war.e.c.t.u.m"? How is one to explain either from the two-field or from the three-field system the case when eighteen "acre ware" correspond to twenty-four common acres, or the even more perplexing case when eighteen acres of "ware" go to the full land and twelve to half-a-full land[488]? In fact, this last instance does not admit of any explanation from natural conditions, because in the natural course of things twelve will never come to be one-half of eighteen.
Thus we are driven to a.s.sume that the "ware" reckoning is an artificial one: as such it could, of course, treat the half-holdings in a different way from the full holdings. Now the only possible basis for an artificial distribution seems to be the a.s.sessment of rents and labour.
Starting from this a.s.sumption we shall have to say that the virgate "de wara" represents a unit of a.s.sessment in which twelve really existing acres have been left out of the reckoning. The a.s.sessment stretches only over half the area occupied by the real holding.
The conclusion we have come to is corroborated by the meaning of the word "wara." The etymological connexion with _war.e.c.t.u.m_ is not sound; the meaning may be best brought out by a comparison with those instances where the word is used without a direct reference to the number of acres. We often find the expression "ad inwaram" in Domesday, and it corresponds to the plain "ad gildam Regis." If a manor is said to contain seven hides _ad inwaram_, it is meant that it pays to the king for seven hides, although there may have been more than seven ploughteams and ploughlands. Another expression of like import is, "pro s.e.xtem hidis se defendit erga Regem." The Burton Cartulary, the earliest survey after Domesday, employed the word "wara" in the same sense[489].
It is not difficult to draw the inference from the above-mentioned facts: the etymological connexion for "wara" is to be sought in the German word for defence--"wehre." The manor defends itself or answers to the king for seven hides. The expression could get other special significations besides the one discussed: we find it for the poll-tax, by which a freeman defends himself in regard to the state[490], and for the weir, which prevents the fish from escaping into the river[491].
[Hides of a.s.sessment.]
This origin and use of the term is of considerable importance, because it shows the artificial character of the system and its close connexion with the taxation by the State. This is a disturbing element which ought to be taken into account by the side of the agrarian influence. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the a.s.sessment started from actual facts, from existing agrarian conditions and divisions. The hide, the yardland, the oxgang existed not only in the geld-rolls, but in fact and on the ground. But in geld-rolls they appeared with a regularity they did not possess in real fact; the rolls express all modifications in the modes of farming and all exemptions, not in the shape of any qualification or lighter a.s.sessment of single plots, but by way of striking off from the number of these plots, or from the number of acres in them; the object which in modern times would be effected by the registration of a "rateable value" differing from the "actual value" was effected in ancient times by the registration of a "rateable size"
differing from the "actual size"; lastly, the surveys and rolls of a.s.sessment do not keep time with the actual facts, and often reflect, by their figures and statistics, the conditions of bygone periods. The hides of the geld or of the "wara" tend to become constant and rigid: it is difficult for the king"s officers to alter their estimates, and the people subjected to the tax try in every way to guard against novelties and encroachments. The real agrarian hide-area is changing at the same time because the population increases, new tenements are formed, and new land is reclaimed.
We find at every step in our records that the a.s.sessment and the agrarian conditions do not coincide. If a manor has been given to a convent in free almoign (in liberam et perpetuam eleemosynam), that is, free from all taxes and payments to the State, there is no reason to describe it in units of a.s.sessment, and in fact such property often appears in manorial records without any "hidation" or reckoning of knight-fees[492]. The Ramsey Cartulary tells us that the land in Hulme was not divided into hides and virgates[493]. There are holdings, of course, and they are equal, but they are estimated in acres. When the hidation has been laid on the land and taxes are paid from it, the smaller subdivisions are sometimes omitted: the artificial system of taxation does not go very deep into details. Even if most part of the land has been brought under the operation of that system, some plots are left which do not partic.i.p.ate in the common payments, and therefore are said to be "out of the hide[494]." Such being the case, there can be no wonder that one of the Ramsey manors answers to the king for ten hides, and to the abbot for eleven and a-half[495].
It is to be noted especially, that although in a few cases a difference is made between the division for royal a.s.sessment and for the manorial impositions, in the great majority of cases no such difference exists, and the duties in regard to the king and to the lord are reckoned according to the same system of holdings. On the manors of Ely, for instance, the 12 _acreware_[496] form the basis of all the reckoning of rents and work. And so if the royal a.s.sessment appear with the features of an artificial fiscal arrangement, the same observation has to be extended to the manorial a.s.sessment; and thus we reach by another way the same conclusion which we drew from an a.n.a.lysis of the single holding and of its component parts. No doubt the whole stands in close relation to the reality of cultivation and land-holding, but the rigidity, regularity, and correctness of the system present a necessary contrast to the facts of actual life. As the soil could not be made to fit into geometrical squares, even so the population could not remain without change from one age to the other within the same boundaries. Thus in course of time the plough-land of 160 and 180 acres, which is the plough-land of practical farming, appears by the side of the statutory hide of 120 acres; and so again inside every single holding there comes up the contrast between its real conformation and distribution, and the outward form it a.s.sumed in regard to the king, the lord, and the steward.
[Rules of inheritance.]
The inquiry as to the relation between the holding and the population on it is, of course, of the utmost importance for a general estimate of the arrangement. From a formal point of view the question is soon solved: on the one hand, the holding of the villain remains undivided and entire; it does not admit of part.i.tion by sale or descent; on the other, the will of the lord may alter, if necessary, the natural course of inheritance and possession; the socage tenure is often free from the first of these limitations, and always free from the second. The indivisibility of villain tenements is chiefly conspicuous in the law of inheritance: all the land went to one of the sons if there were several; very often the youngest inherited; and this custom, to which mere chance has given the name of Borough English, was considered as one of the proofs of villainage[497]. It is certainly a custom of great importance, and probably it depended on the fact that the elder brothers left the land at the earliest opportunity, and during their father"s life. Where did they go? It is easy to guess that they sought work out of the manor, as craftsmen or labourers; that they served the lord as servants, ploughmen, and the like; that they were provided with holdings, which for some reason did not descend to male heirs; that they were endowed with some demesne land, or fitted out to reclaim land from the waste. We may find for all these suppositions some supporting quotation in the records. And still it would be hard to believe that the entire increase of population found an exit by these by-paths. If no exit was found, the brothers had to remain on their father"s plot, and the fact that they did so can be proved, if it needs proof, from doc.u.ments[498]. The unity of the holding was not disturbed in the case; there was no division, and only the right heir, the {hestiopamon} as they said in Sparta, had to answer for the services; the lord looked to him and no further; but in point of fact the holding contained more than one family, and perhaps more than one household. However this may be, in regard to the lord the holding remained one and undivided. This circ.u.mstance draws a sharp line between the feudal arrangement of most counties and that which prevailed in Kent. The gavelkind or tributary tenure there was subjected to equal part.i.tion among the heirs.
[Kentish system.]
Let us take a Kentish survey, the Black Book of St. Augustine"s, Canterbury, for instance: it describes the peasant holdings in a way which differs entirely from other surveys. It begins by stating what duties lie on each _sulung_, that is, on the Kentish ploughland corresponding to the hide of feudal England. No regular sub-divisions corresponding to the virgates and bovates are mentioned, and the reckoning starts not from separate tenements, but from their combination into sulungs[499]. Then follow descriptions of the single sulungs, and it turns out that every one of them consists of a very great number of component parts, because the progeny of the original holders has cl.u.s.tered on them, and parcelled them up in very complicated combinations[500]. The portions are sometimes so small, that an independent cultivation of them would have been quite impossible. In order to understand the description it must be borne in mind that the fact of the tenement being owned by several different persons in definite but undivided shares did not preclude farming in common; while on the other hand, in judging of the usual feudal arrangement of holdings we must remember that the artificial unity and indivisibility of the tenement may be a mere screen behind which there exists a complex ma.s.s of rights sanctioned by morality and custom though not by law. The surveys of the Kentish possessions of Battle Abbey are drawn up on the same principle as those of St. Augustine"s; the only difference is, that the individual portions are collected not in sulungs, but in yokes (_juga_)[501].
And so we have in England two systems of dividing the land of the peasant, of regulating its descent and its duties. In one case the tenant-right is connected with rigid holdings descending to a single heir; in another the tenements get broken up, and the heirs club together in order to meet the demands of the manorial administration.
The contrast is sharp and curious enough. How is one to explain, that in conditions which were more or less identical, the land was sometimes part.i.tioned and sometimes kept together, the people were dispersed in some instances and kept together in others?
[Connecting links between the two systems.]
Closer inspection will show that however sharp the opposition in law may have been, in point of husbandry and actual management the contrast was not so uncompromising. Connecting links may be found between the two.
The Domesday of St. Paul"s, for instance, is compiled in the main in the usual way, but one section of it--the description of the Ess.e.x manors of Kirby, Horlock, and Thorpe--does not differ from the Kentish surveys in anything but the terminology[502]. The services are laid on hides, and not on the actual tenements. Each hide includes a great number of plots which do not fall in with any constant subdivisions of the same kind as the virgates and bovates. Some of these plots are very small, all are irregular in their formation. It happens that one and the same person holds in several hides. In one word, the Kentish system has found a way for some unexplained reason into the possessions of St. Paul"s, and we find subjected to it some Ess.e.x manors which do not differ much in their husbandry arrangements from other properties in Ess.e.x, and have no claim to the special privileges of Kentish soil.
Once apprised of the possible existence of such intermediate forms, we shall find in most surveys facts tending to connect the two arrangements. The Gloucester Cartulary, for instance, mentions virgates held by four persons[503]. The plots of these four owners are evidently brought together into a virgate for the purpose of a.s.sessing the services. Two peasants on the same virgate are found constantly. It happens that one gets the greater part of the land and is called the heir, while his fellow appears as a small cotter who has to co-operate in the work performed by the virgate[504]. Indications are not wanting that sometimes virgates crumbled up into cotlands, bordlands, and crofts. The denomination of some peasants in Northumberland is characteristic enough--they are "selfoders," obviously dwelling "self-other" on their tenements[505]. On the other hand, it is to be noticed that the gavelkind rule of succession, although enacting the partibility of the inheritance, still reserves the hearth to the youngest born, a trace of the same junior right which led to Borough English.
[United and partible holdings.]
I think that upon the whole we must say that in practice the very marked contrast between the general arrangement of the holdings and the Kentish one is more a difference in the way of reckoning than in actual occupation, in legal forms than in economical substance. The general arrangement admitted a certain subdivision under the cover of an artificial unity which found its expression in the settlement of the services and of the relations with the lord[506]. The English case has its parallel on the Continent in this respect. In Alsace, for instance, the holding was united under one "Trager" or bearer of the manorial duties; but by the side of him other people are found who partic.i.p.ate with this official holder in the ownership and in the cultivation[507].
The second system also kept up the artificial existence of the higher units, and obvious interests prevented it from leading to a "morcellement" of land into very small portions in practice. The economic management of land could not go as far as the legal part.i.tion.
In practice the subdivision was certainly checked, as in the virgate system, by the necessity of keeping together the cattle necessary for the tillage. Virgates and bovates would arise of themselves: it was not advantageous to split the yoke of two oxen, the smallest possible plough; and co-heirs had to think even more when they inherited one ox with its ox-gang of land. The animal could not be divided, and this certainly must have stopped in many cases the division of land. When the doc.u.ments speak of plots containing two or three acres, it must be remembered that such crofts and cotlands occur also in the usual system, and I do not see any reason to suppose that the existence of such subdivided rights always indicated a real dispersion of the economic unit: they may have stood as a landmark of the relative rights of joint occupiers. I do not mean to say, of course, that there was no real basis for the very great difference which is a.s.sumed by the two ways of describing the tenements. No doubt the hand of the lord lay heavier on the Ess.e.x people than on the Kentish men, their occupation and usage of the land was more under the control of the lord, and a.s.sumed therefore an aspect of greater regularity and order. Again, the legal privileges of the Kentish people opened the way towards a greater development of individual freedom and a certain looseness of social relations. Still it would be wrong to infer too much from this formal opposition. In both cases the centripetal and the centrifugal tendency are working against each other in the same way, although one case presents the stronger influence of disruptive forces, and the other gives predominance to the collective power. In the history of socage and military tenure the system of unity arose gradually, and without any sudden break, out of the system of division. The intimate connexion between both forms is even more natural in peasant ownership, which had to operate with small plots and small agricultural capital, and therefore inclined naturally towards the artificial combination of divided interests. In any case there is no room in practice for the rigid and consequent operation of either rule of ownership, and, if so, there is no actual basis for the inference that the unification of the holding is to be taken as a direct consequence of a servile origin of the tenement and a sure proof of it.
Unification appears on closer inspection as a result of economic considerations as well as of legal disabilities, and for this reason the tendency operated in the sphere of free property as well as among the villains; among these last it could not preclude the working of the disruptive elements, but in many cases only hid them from sight by its artificial screen of rigid holdings.
[The holding and the team.]
We have seen that the size and distribution of the holdings are connected with the number of oxen necessary for the tillage, and its relation to the full plough. The hide appears as the ploughland with eight oxen, the virgate corresponds to one yoke of oxen, and the bovate to the single head. It need not be added that such figures are not absolutely settled, and are to be accepted as approximate terms. The great heavy plough drawn by eight or ten oxen is certainly often mentioned in the records, especially on demesne land[508]. The dependent people, when they have to help in the cultivation of the demesne, club together in order to make up full plough teams[509]. It is also obvious that the peasantry had to a.s.sociate for the tilling of their own land, as it was very rare for the single shareholder to possess a sufficient number of beasts to work by himself. But it must be noticed that alongside of the unwieldy eight-oxen plough we find much lighter ones.
Even on the demesne we may find them drawn by six oxen. And as for the peasantry, they seem to have very often contented themselves with forming a plough team of four heads[510]. It is commonly supposed by the surveys that the holder of a yardland joins with one of his fellows to make up the team. This would mean on the scale of the hide of 120 acres that the team consists of four beasts[511]. It happens even that a full plough is supposed to belong to two or three peasants, of which every one is possessed only of five acres; in such cases there can be no talk of a big plough; it is difficult to admit even a four-oxen team, and probably those people only worked with one yoke or pair of beasts[512].
Altogether it would be very wrong to a.s.sume in practice a strict correspondence between the size of the holding and the parts of an eight-oxen plough. The observation that the usual reckoning of the hide and of its subdivisions, according to the pattern of the big team, cannot be made to fit exactly with the real arrangement of the teams owned by the peasantry--this firmly established observation leads us once more to the conclusion that the system of equal holdings had become very artificial in process of time and was determined rather by the relation between the peasants and the manorial administration than by the actual conditions of peasant life. Unhappily the artificial features of the system have been made by modern inquirers the starting-point of very far-reaching theories and suppositions. Seebohm has proposed an explanation of the intermixture of strips as originating in the practice of coaration. He argues that it was natural to divide the land tilled by a mixed plough-team among the owners of the several beasts and implements. Every man got a strip according to a certain settled and ever-recurring succession. I do not pretend to judge of the value of the interesting instances adduced by Seebohm from Celtic practices, but whatever the arrangement in Wales or Ireland may have been, the explanation does not suit the English case. A doubt is cast on it already by the fact that such a universal feature as the intermixture of strips appears connected with the occurrence of such a special instrument as the eight-oxen plough. The intermixture is quite the same in Central Russia, where they till with one horse, and in England where more or less big ploughs were used. The doubt increases when we reflect that if the strips followed each other as parts of the plough-team, the great owners would have been possessed of compact plots. Every holder of an entire hide would have been out of the intermixture, and every virgater would have stood in conjunction with a sequence of three other tenants. Neither the one nor the other inference is supported by the facts. The observation that the peasantry are commonly provided with small ploughs drawn by four beasts ruins Seebohm"s hypothesis entirely.
One would have to suppose that most fields were divided into two parts, as the majority of the tenements are yardlands with half a team. The only adequate explanation of the open-field intermixture has been given above; it has its roots in the wish to equalise the holdings as to the quant.i.ty and quality of the land a.s.signed to them in spite of all differences in the shape, the position, and the value of the soil.
[Terms of exceptional occurrence.]
Before I leave the question as to the holdings of the feudal peasantry, I must mention some terms which occur in different parts of England, although more rarely than the usual hides and virgates[513]. Of the _sulung_ I have spoken already. It is a full ploughland, and 200 acres are commonly reckoned to belong to it. The name is sometimes found out of Kent, in Ess.e.x for instance. In Tillingham, a manor of St. Paul"s of London, we come across six hides "trium solandarum[514]." The most probable explanation seems to be that the hide or unit of a.s.sessment is contrasted with the _solanda_ or _sulland_ (sulung), that is with the actual ploughland, and two hides are reckoned as a single solanda.
The yokes (juga) of Battle Abbey[515] are not virgates, but carucates, full ploughlands. This follows from the fact that a certain virgate mentioned in the record is equivalent only to one fourth of the yoke. In the Norfolk manors of Ely Minster we find _tenmanlands_[516] of 120 acres in the possession of several copart.i.tioners, _participes_. The survey does not go into a detailed description of tenements and rights, and the reckoning of services starts from the entire combination, as in the Kentish doc.u.ments. A commonly recurrent term is _wista_[517]; it corresponds to the virgate: a great wista is as much as half-a-hide, or two virgates[518].
The terms discussed hitherto are applied to the tenements in the fields of the village; but besides those there are other names for the plots occupied by a numerous population which did not find a place in the regular holdings. There were craftsmen and rural labourers working for the lord and for the tenants; there were people living by gardening and the raising of vegetables. This cla.s.s is always contrasted with the tenants in the fields. The usual name for their plots is cote, cotland, or cotsetland. The so-called _ferdel_, or fourth part of a virgate, is usually mentioned among them because there are no plough-beasts on it[519]. Another name for the _ferdel_ is _nook_[520]. Next come the crofters, whose gardens sometimes extend to a very fair size--as much as ten acres in one enclosed patch[521]. The cotters proper have generally one, two, and sometimes as much as five acres with their dwellings; they cannot keep themselves on this, as a rule, and have to look out for more on other people"s tenements. A very common name for their plots is "lundinaria[522]," "Mondaylands," because the holders are bound to work for the lord only one day in the week, usually on Monday. Although the absence of plough-beasts, of a part in coaration, and of shares in the common fields draws a sharp line between these men and the regular holders, our surveys try sometimes to fit their duties and plots into the arrangement of holdings; the cotland is a.s.sumed to represent one sixteenth or even one thirty-second part of the hide[523]. The Glas...o...b..ry Survey of 1189 contains a curious hint that two cottages are more valuable than one half-virgate: two cotlands were ruined during the war, and they were thrown together into half a virgate, although it would have been more advantageous to keep two houses on them, that is two households[524]. The _bordae_ mentioned by the doc.u.ments are simply cottages or booths without any land belonging to them[525]. The manorial police keeps a look-out that such houses may not arise without licence and service[526].
A good many terms are not connected in any way with the general arrangement of the holdings, but depend upon the part played by the land in husbandry or the services imposed upon it. To mention a few among them. A plot which has to provide cheese is called Cheeseland[527].
Those tenements which are singled out for the special duty of carrying the proceeds of the manorial cultivation get the name of _averlands_[528]. The terms _lodland_[529], _serland_[530] or _sharland_, are also connected with compulsory labour. The first is taken from the duty to carry loads or possibly to load waggons; the second may be employed in reference to work performed with the sithe or reap-hook. A plot reserved for the leader of the plough-team, the akerman, was naturally called _akermanland_[531]. Sometimes, though rarely, the holding gets its name from the money rent it has to pay. We hear of _denerates_[532] and _nummates_[533] of land in this connexion.
[Conclusions.]
All these variations in detail do not avail to modify to any considerable extent the chief lines on which the medieval system of holdings is constructed. I presume that the foregoing exposition has been sufficient to establish the following points:--
1. The principle upon which the original distribution depended was that of equalizing the shares of the members of the community. This led to the scattering and to the intermixture of strips. The principle did not preclude inequality according to certain degrees, but it aimed at putting all the people of one degree into approximately similar conditions.
2. The growth of population, of capital, of cultivation, of social inequalities led to a considerable difference between the artificial uniformity in which the arrangement of the holdings was kept and the actual practice of farming and ownership.
3. The system was designed and kept working by the influence of communal right, but it got its artificial shape and its legal rigidity from the manorial administration which used it for the purpose of distributing and collecting labour and rent.
4. The holdings were held together as units, not merely by the superior property of the lord, but by economic considerations. They were breaking up under the pressure of population, not merely in the case of free holdings, but also where the holdings were servile.
CHAPTER II.
RIGHTS OF COMMON.
[Meadows.]
The influence of the village community is especially apparent in respect of that portion of the soil which is used for the support of cattle. The management of meadows is very interesting because it presents a close a.n.a.logy to the treatment of the arable, and at the same time the communal features are much more clearly brought out by it. We may take as an instance a description in the Eynsham Survey. The meadow in Shifford is divided into twelve strips, and these are distributed among the lord and the tenantry, but they are not apportioned to any one for constant ownership. One year the lord takes all the strips marked by uneven numbers, and the next year he moves to those distinguished by even numbers[534]. The tenants divide the rest according to some settled rotation. Very often lots are drawn to indicate the portions of the several households[535]. It must be added that the private right of the single occupiers does not extend over the whole year: as in the case of the arable all inclosures fall after the harvest, so in regard to meadows the separate use, and the boundaries protecting it, are upheld only till the mowing of the gra.s.s: after the removal of the hay the soil relapses into the condition of undivided land. The time of the "defence"
extends commonly to "Lammas day:" hence the expression "Lammas-meadow"
to designate such land. It is hardly necessary to insist on the great resemblance between all these features and the corresponding facts in the arrangement of the arable. The principle of division is supplied by the tendency to a.s.sign an equal share to every holding, and the system of scattered strips follows as a necessary consequence of the principle.
The existence of the community as a higher organising unit is shewn in the recurrence of common use after the "defence," and in the fact that the lord is subjected to the common rotation, although he is allowed a privileged position in regard to it. The connexion in which the whole of these rights arises is made especially clear by the shifting ownership of the strips: private right appears on communal ground, but it is reduced to a _minimum_ as it were, has not settled down to constant occupation, and a.s.sumes its definite shape under the influence of the idea of equal apportionment. Of course, by the side of these communal meadows we frequently find others that were owned in severalty.
[Allotment of pasture.]
Land for pasture also occurs in private hands and in severalty, but such cases are much rarer[536]. Sometimes the pasture gets separated and put under "defence" for one part of the year, and merges into communal ownership afterwards[537]. But in the vast majority of cases the pasture is used in common, and none of the tenants has a right to fence it in or to appropriate it for his own exclusive benefit. It ought to be noted, that the right to send one"s cattle to the pasture on the waste, the moors, or in the woods of a manor appears regularly and intimately connected with the right to depasture one"s cattle on the open fields of the village[538]. Both form only different modes of using communal soil.
As in the case of arable and meadow the undivided use cannot be maintained and gets replaced by a system of equalised shares or holdings, so in the case of pasture the faculty of sending out any number of beasts retires before the equalisation of shares according to certain modes of "stinting" the common. We find as an important manorial arrangement the custom to "apportion" the rights of common to the tenements, that is to decide in the manorial Court, mostly according to verdicts of juries, how many head of cattle, and of what particular kind, may be sent to the divers pasture-grounds of the village by the several holdings. From time to time these regulations are revised. One of the Glas...o...b..ry Surveys contains, for instance, the following description from the 45th year of Henry III. Each hide may send to the common eighteen oxen, sixteen cows, one bull, the offspring of the cows of two years, two hundred sheep with four rams, as well as their offspring of one year, four horses and their offspring of one year, twenty swine and their offspring of one year[539]. According to a common rule the only cattle allowed to use the village pasture was that which was constantly kept in the village, _levant e couchant en le maner_. In order to guard against the fraudulent practice of bringing over strange cattle and thus making money at the expense of the township, it was required sometimes that the commonable cattle should have wintered in the manor[540].