NOTE B.—ON THE RUSSIAN MIR.
Since the preceding chapter was written, fresh light has been cast on the history of the Russian village group by the work of M. Kovalevsky, Modern Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia (London, 1891). According to M. Kovalevsky, the view that the peasants retained their personal liberty until the decrees of Boris Godounoff at the end of the sixteenth century deprived them of freedom of migration, is now generally abandoned by Russian scholars (pp. 210-211); and it is recognised that long before that date serfdom of a character similar to that of western Europe was in existence, over, at any rate, a considerable area of the Empire. Still more significant is another fact on which M. Kovalevsky lays great stress. It is commonly asserted, or implied, that the custom of periodical re-division of the lands of the mir is a survival from ancient usage, and forms a transitional stage between common and individual ownership (e.g., Maine, Ancient Law, pp. 267-270). But M. Kovalevsky assures us that the practice is quite modern; that it dates no further back than last century; and that it was due chiefly to Peter the Great’s imposition of a capitation tax (pp. 93-97).
M. Kovalevsky is none the less a strenuous supporter of the village community theory; and he is indignant with M. Fustel for “endorsing an opinion,” that of M. Tchitcherin, “which has already been refuted” by M. Beliaiev. Unfortunately he does not cite any of the facts on which M. Beliaiev relied. He himself allows that but scanty evidence can be found in old Russian documents in support of the theory (pp. 74, 82); and bases his own argument rather on what has taken place in recent centuries, from the sixteenth down to our own day, when outlying territories have been colonized by immigrants. But this is a dangerous method of proof when used by itself; it would lead, for instance, to the conclusion that because the early communities in New England were not subject to manorial lords, there had never been manorial lords in England. And even in the cases he describes, “the unlimited right of private homesteads to appropriate as much soil as each required was scrupulously maintained” (p. 80)—which is very different from the Mark of Maurer.
[1] Earle, Land Charters, p. xlv.
[2] Cf. Southbydyk in Boldon Book, Domesday, iv. 568; and Nasse’s remarks (Agricultural Community, p. 46) as to cases of purchase in Mecklenburg.
[3] See Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, Introduction; and also in Engl. Hist. Rev., 1888, p. 568; Blakesley, in Law Quarterly Rev., 1889, p. 113.
[4] Abundant instances in Earle, Land Charters; cf. Fustel de Coulanges, L’Alleu, p. 377.
[5] See Fustel de Coulanges, L’Alleu, ch. vi.
[6] Hist. Eccl., iii., 17, 21, 22, 28. The use of the word township and its relation to villa require fresh examination in the light of our increased knowledge of Continental usage. Tunscip apparently first appears in Alfred’s translation of Bede, at the end of the ninth century; and its first and only appearance in A.S. law is in Edgar iv. 8, in the second half of the tenth. Schmid, Gesetze der Angelsachen, Gloss. s. v.
[7] Le Moyen Age for June, 1889, p. 131.
[8] Sir George Campbell in Tenure of Land in India, one of the essays in Systems of Land Tenure (Cobden Club).
[9] Maine, Village Communities, p. 76; Ancient Law, p. 260.
[11] Principles of Economics, p. 682, n.
[12] An account of it will be found in Faucher’s essay on Russia in Systems of Land Tenure; compare the English statute of 1388 in St. of the Realm, ii. 56. See [Note B].
[13] Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, p. 242.
[14] See the summary of recent philological discussion in Isaac Taylor, Origin of the Aryans.
[15] Prof. Rhŷs in New Princeton Review for Jan., 1888.
[16] Village Community (1890), p. 71.
[17] Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland, vol. i. p. 492.
[18] De Bello Gallico, v. 14.
[19] Seebohm, V.C. 187, 223.
[20] Agricola, Chap. xix., and see the note in the edition of Church and Brodribb.
[21] How thickly the villas were scattered over the country is shown by Wright, Celt, Roman and Saxon (3rd ed.), pp. 227 seq.
[22] These are the phrases of Green, Making of England, pp. 6, 7.
[23] Seebohm, 294 n. 3.
[24] De Bello Gallico, vi. 13.
[25] For Ireland, see Skene, Celtic Scotland, iii. pp. 139-140, 146; for Wales, A. N. Palmer, Hist. of Ancient Tenures in the Marches of North Wales [1885], pp. 77, 80.
[26] Pp. 43 seq.
[27] References in Seebohm, pp. 283, 287.
[28] Fustel de Coulanges, L’Alleu et le Domaine Rural (1889), pp. 34, 207, 227 seq.
[29] Ibid., pp. 80 seq.
[30] This was pointed out, in correction of Rogers, by Nasse, Agric. Community of M. A., pp. 52 seq.
[31] The bearing of these facts was first pointed out by Mr. Seebohm, V.C. pp. 372-4.
[32] Most recently in Four Oxford Lectures (1887), pp. 61 seq.
[33] Freeman, Norman Conquest, vol. v. ch. xxiv. p. 334.
[34] Decline and Fall, ch. xxxviii.
[35] See Hatch, Growth of Church Institutions, pp. 15, 39.
[36] Ibid., p. 10.
[37] Archæologia xlii. espec. pp. 464-465.
[38] Ibid. p. 459.
[39] Ibid. 464. Cf. for traces of Iberians in other districts, Greenwell and Rolleston, British Barrows, p. 679.
[40] Germania, cc. 24, 25; and see the commentary of Fustel de Coulanges in Recherches, pp. 206-211.
[41] The passages relating to the subject are brought together in a volume of old-fashioned learning—A Dissertation upon Distinctions in Society and Ranks of the People under the Anglo-Saxon Governments, by Samuel Heywood [1818], pp. 317 seq., 413 seq. Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, L’Alleu, chaps, x., xi.
[42] Penitential of Theodore [xix. 20, in Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes, p. 286; xiii. 3, in Hadden and Stubbs, Councils iii. p. 202]. Penitential of Egbert [Addit. 35, in Thorpe, p. 391.]
[43] Fustel de Coulanges, L’Alleu, pp. 359, 413. Such a use of the term “free” may, perhaps, help to explain the phrase with regard to the cotsetla in the Rectitudines: “Det super heorthpenig ... sicut omnis liber facere debet” (“eal swâ œlcan frigean men gebyreth”). Thorpe, p. 185.
[44] Thorpe, Ancient Laws, p. 45 (Ine, 3).
[45] Ibid. 316 (Theodore).
[46] Ibid. 55 (Ine, 39).
[47] Ibid. 63 (Ine, 67).
[48] As stated, for instance, in Britton, ed. Nicholls, ii., p. 13. Privileged villeins were, it is true, only to be found on the royal demesnes. But in the later Roman empire, the Coloni upon the imperial estates were an especially numerous and important class. (Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches, pp. 28-32). That there were such imperial estates in Britain is probable; and it is made more likely by the mention in the Notitia of a Rationalis rei privatae per Britannias. At the conquest by the English, these estates would probably fall to the kings, as in Gaul. (Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, ii., 308.)
[49] L’Alleu, pp. 20-21.
[50] Leges Alamannorum qu. Seebohm, p. 323. It is, however, possible that the “binae aratoriae,” etc., on the Saltus Buritanus meant more than two days, although that is the interpretation of M. Fustel de Coulanges. See Recherches, p. 33.