Copyholds and freeholds intermixed.
Another feature requiring notice was the fact that in the open fields freehold and copyhold land were intermixed; some of the strips being freehold, whilst the next strip was copyhold, instead of all the freehold and all the copyhold lying together. And in the same way the lands belonging to the three lesser or sub-manors lay intermixed, and not all apart by themselves. The open field system overrode the whole.
Thus, if the Hitchin example may be taken as a typical one of the English open field system, it may be regarded generally as having belonged to a village or township under a manor. We may assume that the holdings were composed of numbers of strips scattered [p013] over the three open fields: and that the husbandry was controlled by those rules as to rotation of crops and fallow in three seasons which marked the three-field system, and secured uniformity of tillage throughout each field. Lastly, whilst fallow after the crop was gathered, the open fields were probably everywhere subject to the common rights of pasture. The sheep of the whole township wandered and pastured all over the strips and balks of its fields, while the cows of the township were daily driven by a common herdsman to the green commons, or, after Lammas Day, when the hay crop of the owners was secured, to the lammas meadows.
IV. THE WIDE PREVALENCE OF THE SYSTEM THROUGH GREAT BRITAIN.
But before the attempt is made to trace back the system, it may be well to ask what evidence there is as to its wide prevalence in England, and with what reason the particular example of the Hitchin township may be taken as generally typical.
Enclosure of open fields.
In the first place, an examination into the details of an Enclosure Act will make clear the point that the system as above described is the system which it was the object of the Enclosure Acts to remove. They were generally drawn in the same form, commencing with the recital that the open and common fields lie dispersed in small pieces intermixed with each other and inconveniently situated, that divers persons own parts of them, and are entitled to rights of common on them, so that in their present state they are incapable of improvement, and that it is [p014] desired that they may be divided and enclosed, a specific share being set out and allowed to each owner. For this purpose Enclosure Commissioners are appointed, and under their award the balks are ploughed up, the fields divided into blocks for the several owners, hedges planted, and the whole face of the country changed.
Number of Acts.
The common fields of twenty-two parishes within ten miles of Hitchin were enclosed in this way between 1766 and 1832. All the Acts were of the same character.[9] And as, taking the whole of England, with, roughly speaking, its 10,000 parishes, nearly 4,000 Enclosure Acts were passed between 1760 [p015] and 1844,[10] it will at once be understood how generally prevalent was this form of the open field system so late as the days of the grandfathers of this generation.
Wide extent of open field system.