The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

III. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TRIBAL AND AGRICULTURAL ECONOMY OF THE WEST AND SOUTH-EAST OF BRITAIN WAS PRE-ROMAN, AND SO ALSO WAS THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM.

The south and east Britain not tribal but mainly agricultural before Saxon conquest.

The manorial system of the east and the tribal system of the west of Britain have now been traced back, in turn, upon British ground, as far as the direct evidence extends, i.e. to within a very few generations of the time of the Saxon conquest; and in neither system is any indication discernible of a recent origin.

So far as the evidence has hitherto gone, the two systems were, and had long been, historically distinct. The tribal system probably once extended as far into Wessex as the eastern limits of the district long known as West Wales, i.e. as far east as Wiltshire; and within this district of England the manorial system was evidently imposed upon the conquered country, as it was later in portions of [p246] Wales, leaving only here and there, as we have found, small and mainly local survivals of the earlier tribal system.

But no evidence has yet been adduced leading to the inference that before the Saxon invasion the Welsh tribal system extended all over Britain.

Indeed, the evidence of Cæsar is clear upon the point that the economic condition of the south-east of Britain was quite distinct from that of the interior and west of Britain even in pre-Roman times.

Evidence of Cæsar.

Cæsar describes the south and east of Britain, which he calls the maritime portion, as inhabited by those who had passed over from the country of the Belgæ for the purpose of plunder and war, almost all of whom, he says, retain the name of the states (civitates) from which they came to Britain, where after the war they remained, and began to cultivate the fields. Their buildings he describes as exceedingly numerous, and very like those of the Gauls.[326] The most civilised of all these nations, he says, are those who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime district; nor do they differ much from Gallic customs.[327]

He speaks, on the other hand, of the inland inhabitants as aborigines who mostly did not sow corn, but fed upon flesh and milk.[328]

Now, we have seen that the main distinctive mark of the tribal system was the absence of towns and villages, and the preponderance of cattle over corn.

When corn becomes the ruling item in economic arrangements, there grows up the settled homestead and the village, with its open fields around it. [p247]

Cæsar, therefore, in describing the agriculture and buildings of the Belgic portion of England, and the non-agricultural but pastoral habits of the interior, exactly hit upon the distinctive differences between the already settled and agricultural character of the south-east and the pastoral and tribal polity of the interior and west of Britain.

A corn-growing country before and during Roman rule.

Nor was this statement one resting merely upon hearsay evidence. Cæsar himself found corn crops ripening on the fields, and relied upon them for the maintenance of his army. Nay, the reason which led him to invade the island was in part the fact that the Britons had given aid to the Gauls. Further, he obtained his information about Britain from the merchants, and the news of his approach was carried by the merchants into Britain, thus making it evident that there was a commerce going on between the two coasts, even in pre-Roman times.[329]

We know that throughout the period of Roman occupation Britain was a corn-growing country.

Evidence of Zosimus.

Zosimus represents Julian as sending 800 vessels, larger than mere boats, backwards and forwards to Britain for corn to supply the granaries of the cities on the Rhine.[330]

Eumenius.

Eumenius, in his 'Panegyric of Constantine' (A.D. 310), also describes Britain as remarkable for the richness of its corn crops and the multitude of its cattle.[331]

Pliny.

Pliny further describes the inhabitants of Britain as being so far advanced in agriculture as to plough [p248] in marl in order to increase the fertility of the fields.[332]

Tacitus.

Tacitus,[333] in the same way (A.D. circa 90), speaks of the soil of Britain as fertile and bearing heavy crops (patiens frugum), and describes the tricks of the tax gatherers in collecting the tributum, which was exacted in corn.[334]

Strabo.

Strabo[335] (B.C. 30) mentions the export from Britain of 'corn, cattle, gold, silver, iron, skins, slaves, and dogs.'

Diodorus Siculus.

Diodorus Siculus[336] (B.C. 44) describes the manner of reaping and storing corn in England thus:—

They have mean habitations constructed for the most part of reeds or of wood, and they gather in the harvest by cutting off the ears of corn and storing them in subterraneous repositories; they cull therefrom daily such as are old, and dressing them, have thence their sustenance. . . . The island is thickly inhabited.

Pytheas.

Lastly, we have been recently reminded by Mr. Elton that Pytheas, 'the Humboldt of antiquity,' who visited Britain in the fourth century B.C., saw in the southern districts abundance of wheat in the fields, [p249] and observed the necessity of threshing it out in covered barns, instead of using the unroofed threshing-floors to which he was accustomed in Marseilles. 'The natives,' he says, 'collect the sheaves in great barns, and thresh out the corn there, because they have so little sunshine that our open threshing-places would be of little use in that land of clouds and rain.' [337]

It is clear, then, that in the south-east of Britain a considerable quantity of corn was grown all through the period of Roman rule and centuries before the Roman conquest of the island. And if so, that difference between the pastoral tribal districts of the interior and the more settled agricultural districts of the south and east, noticed by Cæsar, was one of long standing.

The tribal system of Wales furnishes us, therefore, with no direct key to the economic condition of South-eastern Britain.

But, on the other hand, the continuous and long-continued growth of corn in Britain from century to century adds great interest to the further question, Upon what system was it grown?

The corn probably grown on the open-field system.

Upon what other system can it have been grown than the open-field system? The universal prevalence of this system makes it almost certain that the fields found by Cæsar waving with ripening corn were open fields. The open-field system was hardly first introduced by the Saxons, because we find it also in Wales and Scotland. It was hardly introduced by the Romans, because its division lines and measurements [p250] are evidently not those of the Roman agrimensores. The methods of these latter are well known from their own writings. Their rules were clear and definite, and wherever they went they either adopted the previous divisions of the land, or set to work on their own system of straight lines and rectangular divisions. We may thus guess what an open field would have been if laid out, de novo, by the Roman agrimensores; and conclude that the irregular network or spider's web of furlongs and strips in the actual open fields of England with which we have become familiar is as great a contrast as could well be imagined to what the open field would have been if laid out directly under Roman rules.

We happen to know also, from passages which we shall have occasion to quote hereafter, that the Roman agrimensores did find in other provinces—we have no direct evidence for Britain—an open-field system, with its irregular boundaries, its joint occupation, its holdings of scattered pieces, and its common rights of way and of pasture, existing in many districts—in multis regionibus—where the red tape rules of their craft had not been consulted, and the land was not occupied by regularly settled Roman colonies.[338]

The open-field system in some form or other we may understand, then, to have preceded in Britain even the Roman occupation. And perhaps we may go one step further. If the practice of ploughing marl into the ground mentioned by Pliny was an early and local peculiarity of Britain and of Gaul, as it seems to have been from his description, then clearly [p251] it indicates a more advanced stage of the system than the early Welsh co-aration of portions of the waste. The marling of land implies a settled arable farming of the same land year after year, and not a ploughing up of new ground each year. It does not follow that there was yet a regular rotation of crops in three courses, and so the fully organised three-field system; but evidently there were permanent arable fields devoted to the growth of corn, and separate from the grass land and waste, before Roman improvements were made upon British agriculture.

Was the system manorial?

But the prevalence of an open-field husbandry in its simpler forms was, as we have been taught by the investigation into the tribal systems of Wales and Ireland, no evidence of the prevalence of that particular form of the open-field husbandry which was connected with the manorial system, and of which the yard-land was an essential feature. In order to ascertain the probability of the manorial system having been introduced by the Saxons, or having preceded the Saxon conquest in the south and east of Britain, it becomes necessary to examine the manorial system in its Continental history, so as if possible, working once more from the known to the unknown—this time from the better known Roman and German side of the question—to find some stepping-stones at least over the chasm in the English evidence.

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