Hence the very close connection between copyholds, i.e., the commuted servile tenures, and common fields, which was observed as long as common fields were numerous.
To sum up, it is clear that on a priori grounds there are certain defined conditions in which alone we can expect to find the peculiarly English type of open-field arable, the type which most obstinately resists dissolution, persisting until destroyed by (a) the absorption of all properties into the hands of a single owner, or (b) a general valuation and redistribution of properties and holdings. These are that the land must originally have been tilled by the method of co-aration, and that co-aration must have persisted until after some at least of the holdings had become a definite set of strips of land, the position of which was not shifted from year to year. These conditions, as Seebohm shows, are the characteristics of the typical English village community. But they are not to be found in open arable fields of the Celtic type of run-rig; and they are not to be expected in lands first brought into cultivation after the disappearance of serfdom.
We may therefore expect to find enclosure of arable land proceeding easily, without the necessity for special Acts of Parliament, and at a comparatively early stage of social evolution, on the one hand in Devon and Cornwall, the counties bordering on Wales, and in Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire; and on the other hand in districts like the Weald of Surrey, Kent and Sussex.
That this inference agrees with the facts will be shown in detail.
Traces of run-rig, however, both in the form of characteristic terms, and of records of local custom, are not confined entirely to the counties within or near the borders of Wales or West Wales. The Act (1770 c. 59) for Matton in Lincolnshire has for its object to enclose certain commons and “forty-five acres or thereabouts of antient Toftheads and small Inclosures called the Town Rig.” To the Act for Barton in Westmoreland (1819 c. 83), which encloses “certain open common fields or town fields,” which mentions “the dales or parcels of land in the said common fields or town fields,” there is a parallel in the Act (1814 c. 284), for Gateshead in Durham to enclose “certain common or town fields, and other commonable lands and grounds.” These phrases are all reminiscent of the fact that lands held, or which had previously been held, in run-rig in Scotland, or in rundale in Ireland, are known as town lands.[90]
- [90] “The Town Fields” indifferently with “The Common Fields” is the name by which the ancient arable area of Wrexham is called in old deeds, and the same name is applied to the ancient common fields in many places in North Wales. (See A. N. Palmer, “History of Ancient Tenures of Land in the Marches of North Wales,” pp. 1, 2.)
Much more striking, however, is the local custom at Stamford, described in the following passage by Arthur Young: “Lord Exeter has property on the Lincoln side of Stamford, that seems held by some tenure of ancient custom among the farmers, resembling the rundale of Ireland. The tenants divide and plough up the commons, and then lay them down to become common again; and shift the open fields from hand to hand in such a manner, that no man has the same land two years together; which has made such confusion that were it not for ancient surveys it would now be impossible to ascertain the property” (“General View of the Agriculture of Lincolnshire,” p. 27). William Marshall’s comment is perhaps worth adding: “In regard to commons, a similar custom has prevailed, and indeed still prevails, in Devonshire and Cornwall; and with respect to common fields, the same practice under the name of ‘Run-rig’ formerly was common in the Highlands of Scotland, and, perhaps in more remote times, in Scotland in general.”
Lastly, it is to be noticed that there is no mention in any description of run-rig of the arable fields being used as a common pasture after harvest, or during a fallow year. We shall find later the same absence of this custom characteristic of English Common Field, from open arable fields in Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancashire, Wales and Devonshire; i.e., from the Celtic part of England and Wales. This may, of course, be a mere coincidence, and the true explanation may in each be that the stubble was not needed for pasture. But in any case the absence of rights of pasture over arable fields removes a great obstacle to piecemeal enclosure.
Every Year Lands.
In the chapter on Norfolk agriculture it is shown that the distinction between Infield and Outfield, which was characteristic of the agriculture of the Lothians, was also characteristic of the agriculture of Norfolk; and that a great part of the uninclosed intermixed arable land was not subject to rights of common, and was made to bear a crop every year, such land being known as Every Year lands, Whole Year lands, or Infields.