James McDonald, writing in 1811 a later report on the Agriculture of the Hebrides, published in 1811, gives an account of the beginning of the disappearance of run-rig in those islands. “Mr. Maclean of Coll insisted upon some of his tenants dividing among them the land which they formerly held in common, or run-rig, and which they were accustomed for ages to divide annually by lot, for the purposes of cultivation. They obeyed with great reluctance, and each tenant had his own farm to himself. Three or four years’ experience has convinced them now that their landlord acted wisely.... The same thing happened on various other estates, and especially in Mull, Tyree and Skye” (p. 133). But the general disappearance of run-rig in these islands took place about the middle of the nineteenth century, and was the consequence of the temporary prosperity produced by the rise of the kelp industry. This led to extreme subdivision of holdings by sub-letting, the body of small crofters so created relying in the main upon the kelp industry for a livelihood, and using their crofts as a subsidiary means of subsistence (Skene, “Celtic Scotland,” Vol. III., ch. x.).

It is clear that the two essential features of run-rig are (1) that it is based upon co-aration, several farmers yoking their horses to one plough, and tilling the land in partnership; just as the English common-field system was also based upon co-aration, with the difference that in England, in general, at the time that co-aration was practised, the plough was generally drawn by eight oxen instead of by four horses.

(2) That run-rig has a special distinctive feature in the periodical division and re-division of the land, and that in the Hebrides, at least, this feature survived after co-aration had become obsolete.[89] In this respect the Scotch agricultural community resembles that of Great Russia, where also the periodical re-division of the open fields, so as to make the shares proportional to the working power of each family, persists after co-aration has disappeared.

That throughout the British Isles, and indeed throughout Northern Europe, the earliest tillage of the soil by ploughs was accomplished by the method of co-aration, scarcely admits of doubt; nor is it easy to doubt that before the possibility of improving the crop by manure was discovered, there was no permanent occupation by one of the partners in the ploughing, of any particular set of strips so ploughed.

But it is also obvious that whereas we know that in some places, as in the Hebrides and in Russia, the idea of common occupation of the land persisted, after co-aration had ceased, and displayed itself in the form of periodic or occasional re-division of the arable land, it is equally possible for the permanent occupation of certain strips of land to be definitely allotted to some individuals, while the practice of co-aration is still persistent among other individuals of the same community. In the latter case when individual cultivation begins, the peasant who drives his own plough team, drives it over the same set of strips of land as had previously been ploughed by the common plough; he feels more than ever that they are his own, and that he must guard them against encroachment; though, perhaps, he is not averse, when occasion offers, to widen his strips at the expense of his neighbours. The consequence is that by the time individual cultivation has entirely superseded co-operative ploughing in any particular village, freeholds and copyholds are definitely arranged as we know them in the English common fields. Particularly is this likely to be the case if a long interval of time elapses between the first beginning of individual ploughing and the last disappearance of combined ploughing.

If on the other hand the practice of periodic re-allotment of the land persists up to the time when co-aration ceases, it will obviously be natural for the peasants when they dissolve their plough-partnership, to allot their land to one another with some regard for convenience as well as equity. They will naturally—as Sir John Sinclair noticed they did—allot to each household a share in each particular sort of soil which had previously been cultivated in common, but each man’s share in each field is likely to be allotted to him in one piece, or at least in a few, and not in a number of strips intermixed with those of his neighbours. Then when at a later period hedging and ditching begin, each man has his land in a form convenient for enclosure; and by enclosing it he forms a series of irregular fields, roughly square, or when oblong, with the length not many times exceeding the width. No throwing of the parish into the melting pot, either by a private Act of Parliament or by a voluntary submission to a Commission, was necessary in order to effect enclosure.

On the one hand, then, it is obvious that the great inequality of the holdings held by servile and semi-servile tenures from the time of Domesday onwards, was favourable to the creation of the conditions necessary to make piecemeal enclosure difficult. The socmanni or francigenae, who held a whole carucate or ploughland apiece, presumably also had, as a rule, a whole ploughteam, and were able to plough for themselves, while their neighbours, who held yardlands and half-yardlands, i.e., one-quarter or one-eighth of a ploughland, could only have their lands ploughed by the common village ploughs. As soon as the socmanni and francigenae began to permanently improve the soil, as for instance by marling, the beneficial results of which were believed in the eighteenth century to last for at least twelve years, they would naturally become a practically insuperable obstacle not only to any re-division of the land, but also to any minor variation in the exact position of the ridges which comprised the different holdings. Once one such holding was definitely located, the fixing of all other holdings which were intermixed with it would follow: every increase of certainty would be an encouragement to any given tenant to improve his land, and every expenditure of effort by a tenant on permanent improvement would be an additional motive to him to resist any changes in the position of his ridges.

On the other hand, in the case of land first brought into cultivation at a later date, when servile tenures had become obsolete, by “tenants at will” of the lord of the manor, the assured continued occupation of a defined set of ridges in land so reclaimed would not arise, even if the original tenants practised co-aration; and if the original cultivators worked independently, of course no intermixture of holdings would ever arise on such holdings.