The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields

by Gilbert Slater

CHAPTER XVI.
COMMON FIELDS IN NEW ENGLAND.

A certain amount of light upon the question when the common field system lost its vitality, its advantages being completely overshadowed by its disadvantages, so that only the obstructive forces which we have considered prevented its disappearance, is furnished by the fact that the original settlers of New England, who presumably derived their ideas of agriculture from the eastern counties of England, reproduced in America a form of the English village community. No doubt their poverty and early difficulties compelled them to revert to a further degree of dependence on mutual help, and so perhaps the form of community which they there established may have been of a more primitive type than that which they had left behind, and allowance must be made for this possibility; and also for the possibility of effects of the sojourn of the Pilgrim Fathers in Holland.

The following accounts of the New England common fields are taken from two papers by Mr. Herbert B. Adams:—

“Vestiges of the old Germanic system of common fields are to be found in almost every ancient town in New England. In the town of Plymouth there are to this day some 200 acres of Commons known as Town Lands. This tract is largely forest, where villagers sometimes help themselves to wood in good old Teutonic fashion.... In the old town of Sandwich, near Cape Cod, at the point where the ship canal was projected in 1880, there is a little parcel of 130 acres known as the Town Neck. This is owned by a company of twenty-four proprietors, the descendants and heirs of the first settlers in the town, and this tract is managed to this day as a common field. Originally the Town Neck with other common lands belonged to the whole town. In the MS. town records of Sandwich I find under date May 22, 1658, this vote: ‘If any inhabytant wanteth land to plant, hee may have some in the Towne Neck, or in the Common for six yeare and noe longer.’ Later, in 1678, April 6, townsmen are given liberty to improve Neck lands ‘noe longer than ten yeares ... and then to be at the townsmen’s ordering again.’ In the year 1695, the use of the Town Neck was restricted to the heirs of the original proprietors, and the land was staked out into 38 lots. The lots were not fenced off, and the whole tract continued to lie under the authority of the entire body of proprietors, like the arable fields of a German village community. In 1696, April 4, it was agreed that the Town Neck should be improved for the future by planting and sowing as a common field, until the major part of those interested should see cause otherwise to dispose or improve the same. The common fence was to be made up, and a gate to be provided by the first of May. A field driver or hayward was to keep the Town Neck clear of creatures and to impound for trespass. In 1700 it was voted that the Neck be cleared of creatures by the 16th of April, and that no part of the land be improved by tillage other than by sowing.

“And thus from the latter half of the 17th century down to the present day (May 9, 1881) have the proprietors of Sandwich Town Neck regulated the use of their old common field. Every year they have met together in the Spring to determine when the fences should be set up and how the pasture should be stinted. The old Commoners’ records are for the most part still in existence as far back as the year 1693, and before this time the town records are full of agrarian legislation, for the Town Neck was then virtually town property. There arose in Sandwich and in every New England village community the same strife between old residents and new comers, as between the Patricians and Plebeians of ancient Rome. The old settlers claimed a monopoly of public land, and the new comers demanded a share. In most old New England towns the heirs of original settlers or of citizens living in the community at a specified date retained a monopoly of the common lands for many years until finally compelled by force of public opinion to cede their claims to the town. In Sandwich, however, a vestige of the old system has survived to this day. Every Spring, for many years, has appeared a public notice (I saw one in the Seaside Press, May 8, 1880) calling together the proprietors of the Town Neck at some store in the village to choose a moderator and a clerk, and to regulate the letting of cow rights for the ensuing year....

“There were for many years in the town of Salem certain common fields owned by associated proprietors just as in the case of Sandwich Town Neck. Such were the north and south fields in Salem. The old Commoners’ records of the south fields are still preserved in the library of the Essex Institute, and date as far back as 1680. Under the date of October 14th of that year, I find the following: ‘Voted that the proprietors have liberty to put in cattle for herbage—that is to say 6 cows, 4 oxen, 3 horses or yearlings, or 24 calves to 10 acres of land, and so in proportion to greater or less quantities of land; and no person shall cut or strip their Indian corn stalks after they have gathered their corn, on penalty of forfeiting herbage.’

“The so-called great pastures of Salem, some 300 acres, are to this day owned and managed by a small company of proprietors in common, of whom Dr. Wheatland of the Essex Institute has been for some years the clerk. He has in his hands the records of the proprietory, extending back for many years.

“These records are full of old time regulations in regard to common fencing, common pasturage, cow commons, sheep commons and the like.” (“The Germanic Origin of New England Towns” p. 33.)

Perhaps still more conclusive are the following decrees of the legislative body of Massachusetts, which Mr. Adams quotes. In the spring of 1643 the Massachusetts General Court ordered “For preventing disorder in corn feilds wᶜʰ are inclosed in common ... that those who have the greater quantity in such fields shall have power to order the whole, notwithstanding any former order to the contrary, & that every one who hath any part in such common feild shall make and maintaine the fences according to their severall quantities.”