4. The holdings were held together as units, not merely by the superior property of the lord, but by economic considerations. They were breaking up under the pressure of population, not merely in the case of free holdings, but also where the holdings were servile.
CHAPTER II.
RIGHTS OF COMMON.
Meadows.
The influence of the village community is especially apparent in respect of that portion of the soil which is used for the support of cattle. The management of meadows is very interesting because it presents a close analogy to the treatment of the arable, and at the same time the communal features are much more clearly brought out by it. We may take as an instance a description in the Eynsham Survey. The meadow in Shifford is divided into twelve strips, and these are distributed among the lord and the tenantry, but they are not apportioned to any one for constant ownership. One year the lord takes all the strips marked by uneven numbers, and the next year he moves to those distinguished by even numbers[534]. The tenants divide the rest according to some settled rotation. Very often lots are drawn to indicate the portions of the several households[535]. It must be added that the private right of the single occupiers does not extend over the whole year: as in the case of the arable all inclosures fall after the harvest, so in regard to meadows the separate use, and the boundaries protecting it, are upheld only till the mowing of the grass: after the removal of the hay the soil relapses into the condition of undivided land. The time of the 'defence' extends commonly to 'Lammas day:' hence the expression 'Lammas-meadow' to designate such land. It is hardly necessary to insist on the great resemblance between all these features and the corresponding facts in the arrangement of the arable. The principle of division is supplied by the tendency to assign an equal share to every holding, and the system of scattered strips follows as a necessary consequence of the principle. The existence of the community as a higher organising unit is shewn in the recurrence of common use after the 'defence,' and in the fact that the lord is subjected to the common rotation, although he is allowed a privileged position in regard to it. The connexion in which the whole of these rights arises is made especially clear by the shifting ownership of the strips: private right appears on communal ground, but it is reduced to a minimum as it were, has not settled down to constant occupation, and assumes its definite shape under the influence of the idea of equal apportionment. Of course, by the side of these communal meadows we frequently find others that were owned in severalty.
Allotment of pasture.
Land for pasture also occurs in private hands and in severalty, but such cases are much rarer[536]. Sometimes the pasture gets separated and put under 'defence' for one part of the year, and merges into communal ownership afterwards[537]. But in the vast majority of cases the pasture is used in common, and none of the tenants has a right to fence it in or to appropriate it for his own exclusive benefit. It ought to be noted, that the right to send one's cattle to the pasture on the waste, the moors, or in the woods of a manor appears regularly and intimately connected with the right to depasture one's cattle on the open fields of the village[538]. Both form only different modes of using communal soil. As in the case of arable and meadow the undivided use cannot be maintained and gets replaced by a system of equalised shares or holdings, so in the case of pasture the faculty of sending out any number of beasts retires before the equalisation of shares according to certain modes of 'stinting' the common. We find as an important manorial arrangement the custom to 'apportion' the rights of common to the tenements, that is to decide in the manorial Court, mostly according to verdicts of juries, how many head of cattle, and of what particular kind, may be sent to the divers pasture-grounds of the village by the several holdings. From time to time these regulations are revised. One of the Glastonbury Surveys contains, for instance, the following description from the 45th year of Henry III. Each hide may send to the common eighteen oxen, sixteen cows, one bull, the offspring of the cows of two years, two hundred sheep with four rams, as well as their offspring of one year, four horses and their offspring of one year, twenty swine and their offspring of one year[539]. According to a common rule the only cattle allowed to use the village pasture was that which was constantly kept in the village, levant e couchant en le maner. In order to guard against the fraudulent practice of bringing over strange cattle and thus making money at the expense of the township, it was required sometimes that the commonable cattle should have wintered in the manor[540].
Pasture an adjunct to holding.