A Short History of English Agriculture | Page 3

also different, for the reason that the former had to contend with the inequalities of the earth's surface and varied much when no scientific measurement was possible. As late as 1820 the acre was of many different sizes in England. In Bedfordshire it was 2 roods, in Dorset 134 perches instead of 160, in Lincolnshire 5 roods, in Staffordshire 2-1/4 acres. To-day the Cheshire acre is 10,240 square yards. As, however, an acre was and is a day's ploughing for a team, we may assume that the most usual acre was the same area then as now. There were also half-acre strips, but whatever the size the strips were divided one from another by narrow grass paths generally called 'balks', and at the end of a group of these strips was the 'headland' where the plough turned, the name being common to-day. Many of these common fields remained until well on in the nineteenth century; in 1815 half the county of Huntingdon was in this condition, and a few still exist.[9] Cultivating the same field year after year naturally exhausted the soil, so that the two-field system came in, under which one was cultivated and the other left fallow; and this was followed by the three-field system, by which two were cropped in any one year and one lay fallow, the last-named becoming general as it yielded better results, though the former continued, especially in the North. Under the three-field plan the husbandman early in the autumn would plough the field that had been lying fallow during summer, and sow wheat or rye; in the spring he broke up the stubble of the field on which the last wheat crop had been grown and sowed barley or oats; in June he ploughed up the stubble of the last spring crop and fallowed the field.[10] As soon as the crops began to grow in the arable fields and the grass in the meadows to spring, they were carefully fenced to prevent trespass of man and beast; and, as soon as the crops came off, the fields became common for all the village to turn their stock upon, the arable fields being usually common from Lammas (August 1) to Candlemas (February 2) and the meadows from July 6, old Midsummer Day, to Candlemas[11]; but as in this climate the season both of hay and corn harvest varies considerably, these dates cannot have been fixed.
The stock, therefore, besides the common pasture, had after harvest the grazing of the common arable fields and of the meadows. The common pasture was early 'stinted' or limited, the usual custom being that the villager could turn out as many stock as he could keep on his holding. The trouble of pulling up and taking down these fences every year must have been enormous, and we find legislation on this important matter at an early date. About 700 the laws of Ine, King of Wessex, provided that if 'churls have a common meadow or other partible land to fence, and some have fenced their part and some have not, and cattle stray in and eat up their common corn or grass; let those go who own the gap and compensate to the others who have fenced their part the damage which then may be done, and let them demand such justice on the cattle as may be right. But if there be a beast which breaks hedges and goes in everywhere, and he who owns it will not or cannot restrain it, let him who finds it in his field take it and slay it, and let the owner take its skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.'
England was not given over to one particular type of settlement, although villages were more common than hamlets in the greater part of the country.[12] The vill or village answers to the modern civil parish, and the term may be applied to both the true or 'nucleated' village of clustered houses and the village of scattered hamlets, each of a few houses, existing chiefly on the Celtic fringe. The population of some of the villages at the time of the Norman Conquest was numerous, 100 households or 500 people; but the average townships contained from 10 to 20 households.[13] There was also the single farm, such as that at Eardisley in Herefordshire, described in Domesday, lying in the middle of a forest, perhaps, as in other similar cases, a pioneer settlement of some one more adventurous than his fellows.[14]
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Such was the early village community in England, a community of free landholders. But a change began early to come over it.[15] The king would grant to a church all the rights he had in the village, reserving only the trinoda necessitas, these rights including the feorm or farm,