COUNTRY PROPER
The state of things exhibited in the previous chapter is essentially transitional. What we have there seen is the town emerging out of the country, or, to put it another way, the country merging, through the principle of attraction, into the focus of the town. This method of viewing the subject is necessarily partial and incomplete. The existence of a common in association with a town or village or group of villages is not a self-evident proposition, to be taken for granted. It is clearly part of a system which it now becomes our business to investigate.
To all appearances many of the arrangements found in the course of, and to the close of, the Middle Ages, and even (in a decaying and disappearing form) almost to our own generation, were descended from that well-nigh immemorial antiquity, in which our forefathers were colonists in what was to them a new world—a world of forest and of fen, of man-eating beasts, and alien foemen as fierce or fiercer than they. These conditions determined the course of action of the men who lived under them. For safety, men of one blood dwelt together in a stockaded village or tún. They and their stock, however, had to subsist on their labour and the bounty of the earth; and therefore around the village a tract of cultivable land was appropriated to the use of the community. Until some degree of security was attained it was futile to dream too much of individual rights; the inhabitants would have been only too glad of the co-operation of their neighbours, and whilst some worked others no doubt stood to arms. Within this area seem to have lain fenced fields for the shelter of calves and other young animals, but this was probably the only exception. Beyond the arable land lay a ring of meadow land; beyond that the stinted pasture; and beyond that again the forest or waste.
By the term "common" is generally understood common of pasture; it is not unusual to meet with the phrase "cow commons," as though cows were the principal, if not the sole, objects which rendered commons of service. This may well have been the case in later times. In early days however, there went along with it common tillage, examples of which are still to be found on the Continent. Traces of the open-field system exist also in various parts of England, notably between Hitchin and Cambridge, where there are huge turf balks dividing the fields. It is said that within the last century the country lying between Royston and Newmarket was entirely unenclosed, and till quite late in the century parishes like Lexton, in Northamptonshire, retained this characteristic. Other examples occur at Swanage in Dorset and Stogursey in West Somerset.
Borough English
Before proceeding to describe the methods of cultivation employed, it is desirable to glance at a custom which, there is reason to suppose, is connected with that remote period when the English were not de jure masters of the soil, but occupied the position of colonists, who either expropriated the original inhabitants or entered upon possession of land as res nullius, to which they had established no solid claim by prescription. We have already referred to that valuable repertoire of national customs, so judiciously edited as to merit the higher praise invaluable—the Year-Books. The reports of the pleas in the Common Bench for 1293 include the following:
"One A. brought a writ of entry against B., saying, 'Into which he had not entry except by such an one who had tortiously, &c., disseised his father Robert.' And he laid the descent thus: 'From Robert descended the right, &c., to Adam the present demandant, as his youngest son and heir, according to the custom of such a place, &c.'
"Asseby: 'Sir, we tell you that Adam has an elder brother named N., who is legitimate and is alive, and whom they have omitted. Judgment of the omission.'
"Sutton: 'Sir, even if he had made a quit-claim to him, yet that could not be a bar to us, because by the custom of the country the youngest shall have his inheritance, wherefore there is no need to make mention of him.'
"Asseby: 'Sir, he has brought a writ at common law; judgment if he ought not to be answered at common law, and if he (the demandant) can allege the custom.'