stock in the corn-growing East as in the pastoral West. This is the case in a few counties, notably Lincoln, and it is the case to a large extent in Ireland, a fertile country if it were freed for Anglo-Scottish control. But so especially adapted for stock-raising is the whole of the British Islands west of the line I have suggested, that in this part the cattle, in spite of the small area of corn-raising, were generally far more numerous even in 1880 than in the East. If the comparison was one of the weight of the animals, it might not be so effective. The historic antiquarians speak of a wild-grass system as peculiar to the Celtic parts, in which the fields, after corn cultivation, were thrown out to grow up in pasture. It simply amounts to this where it grew easily, natural pasture was allowed to take the place of arable in the place of a fallow after the forest land had been long enough under arable cultivation to have felt the sweetening effect of the sun, and to have acquired a rough drainage; where, as in the eastern counties of England, grass grew with difficulty, arable cultivation on a two- or three-field system with a fallow took the place of pasturage, the stock being turned on to the field to clean it every second or third year. Where the land lay low and flat, and was difficult to drain, a frequent case in the eastern fens, a system of long narrow strips, the earth bedded up to the centre by the plough, was the most natural means of lessening the excess of water. The system found convenient when pipe drains were unknown was no doubt extended to other cases. Marshall, 5 while he considers that formerly nearly the whole of England lay unenclosed, the meadows being on the low-lying lands, the more distant land pasturage and wood, the inlying land "stinted," says that in the extreme West this system did not prevail. Here the custom was that the lord of the manor assigned portions of the common pasturage to persons who had rights of use to be ploughed up for two years for wheat. Then they returned to common pasture. This is the result of the ease with which grass will grow in the West. The general practice as to meadows was to divide the meadow into as many portions as there were persons, and then draw lots. Sinclair, treating of Perth county, says the ground is prepared for yielding three crops of oats by folding the cattle upon it, or by watering by means of the rivulets which run from the hills, and, after being thus cropped, it is thrown into grass. I do not believe that Celtic or Teutonic has anything to do with it. It is purely a question of rainfall. Fencing. One of the first and most prominent evidences of the social change is an increase in the amount of enclosed land. The common fields for cultivation must have been generally, though probably not always, enclosed as being cheaper for the community than perpetual watching; stockbreeders require divers small enclosures for their different bunches of cattle; but apart from this, and from the necessary enclosure of meadows, individual ownership called for enclosure from the common stock, and from persons riding or driving over the fields, which in the then state of the roads could not have been uncommon. Tusser, in the sixteenth century, gives as an argument in favour of enclosures this kind of damage, instancing the damage done by driving flocks of sheep to be washed across corn fields. The men of the Islands in the Middle Ages were as much alive to the convenience or the necessity of enclosures as we are to-day. But the mechanical means were not, as they are at the present day, easily at hand in the form of wire or iron posts. Enclosures were a matter then of comparative cost; where it was cheaper to staff herd cattle or sheep or swine than to enclose large tracts with fences of stone or wood or thorn, the man gifted with common sense, who had struggled with the land for existence, would so herd them; it is only very gradually that the mechanical means so improved as to balance the cost of enclosure. Apart from the waste of timber, jealously guarded, the cost of getting out and putting up a wooden fence of any description was very considerable; axes, nails, unless the palings were bound with withies likely soon to be broken by animals, iron wedges, supplemented by the stone gluts which antiquarians suppose to be palæolithic axes, would all have to be procured at some cost. Though palings were used for fences, it was for king's or lord's or abbot's parks. The common fields were enclosed either by split rail fences, if the wood was plentiful, or by thorn hedges with ditch or bank, or dry-stone walls, such as are used in many parts of the Islands (e.g. parts of Gloucestershire) for fencing at the present day. Staff herding would have the additional advantage that the herd could keep watch for raiders or enemies. 7 Our notices of enclosures in early times in England and South-Eastern Scotland are casual ones. The Welsh laws suggest that, except for meadows, fencing was not considered a necessity. Every owner of corn was to mind his own corn, and every owner of beasts his beasts, on risk of their being impounded for tresspass. But when the crop was harvested, the owners must look after it, and the cattle are free, and the pigs. Crop is defined as "corn after it is severed from the land whereon it grew; the produce of an orchard; cabbage; flax after it is cut or in a garden uncut; tedded hay; thatch for houses; and their fence (thorns ?); leeks, and everything that pertains to a garden." 9 So long as cultivation was in common, so long as the community had common interests in the soil, it was unlikely that any co-owner would intentionally turn animals on his crop. Western Scotland gives us no record of this time; but any silence elsewhere is compensated by the attention given to fencing in the Irish Brehon laws. We have to come down almost to our own time before we find the details of enclosure dealt in with equal care or such evident appreciation of the difficulty of balancing the duties of men cultivating land and ranging cattle. There is mention in the very ancient Senchus Mor of the necessity of fencing common fields for cultivation.10 The necessity for fencing the common lands may very likely have occurred between the date of the reduction into writing of the text of very ancient custom and the much later commentary. 11 There is immediate distress for neglect of fencing in accordance with the pledge given for corn fields and grass fields; but the detailed provisions about fencing are found in the "Judgments of Co-tenancy," in vol. iv. of the Laws. This tract shows the properties of the group family subdivided and separated by joint fences. All fences were joint fences. Fines were imposed for improperly made fences, and for delay in fencing. Even where the family land had been partitioned, the family remained liable to this duty. "Let them distrain his family until they fence their brother, the defaulter's' land." "12 That all might be constrained to help in the work of fencing, a rule is given that each of them shall give his victuals into the hand of the other at night that he may remember to come in the morning. 13 66 Four kinds of fences are mentioned, of great height to turn deer: (1) a ditch with an earth bank, the ditch to be three feet deep, and sloping from one foot wide at the bottom to three feet at the top, with the bank to correspond; (2) a dry-stone wall, three feet thick and six feet high; and two kinds of rail fences of split wood, one so close as to turn small pigs : the top of the one tree shall be on the trunk of the other tree, and so as that the smallest sucking pig could not pass through it for its closeness, nor the ox pass over it for its height; the other, the naked fence, much less close, but the same height." "A trench or stone wall in the plain; a naked fence in the half plain; and the close fence in the wood." 14 The close fence is the modern Virginia rail fence. Besides the provisions for fencing, the Irish law required specific care to be taken of stock on unfenced land: "a yoke for the pigs; a hood for the hens; ties of leather for the goats; a spancel for the yearling calves; a shepherd with the sheep; a herdsman with the cows." 15 Trespass of cattle is minutely estimated as to its nature, length of time, time of day or night, season of the year, size of animal, and sufficiency of fence, by a "worthy neighbour," in grass of equal value. 16 Fines are also laid down for damage done by the pet pig kept in an enclosure, the pet pig being represented, very truly to nature, as leading the herd into trespass. material nearest to hand, In the north and west of separated the cultivated In England the quickset Each part used for fencing the most effective, or least expensive. Scotland the stone wall and dyke land from the common out-pasture. hedge and ditch, not so effective as a timber fence against deer, or even mischievous tame stock, but less wasteful of timber, became the usual mode of making enclosure. Fitzherbert, in the sixteenth century, speaks of the ditch as four or five feet wide, and two and a half to three feet deep, and he gives directions for making quickset fences. Enclosures, then, as a remedy against trespass, an encouragement to individual improvement, a means of acquiring land in severalty, became, as time goes on, increasingly common, encouraging the break up of the common cultivation of the community. NOTES. See, for instance, the map of a portion of the Thames valley in Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond. 2 All West European gardening and farming comes from the Romans. Their agricultural writings are inconsistent with common culture. Palladius' Husbandrie gives elaborate instructions for grain-sowing, leaving times and places to individual judgment. He gives directions (41, 43, 44) for buying or choosing a field, and his fields have no balks (ii. 3). 3 See Mr Seebohm's plan of Hitchin in his Village Communities. 4 Bevan's Statistical Atlas, 1880. 5 Marshall, On the Appropriation and Enclosure of Communable and Intermixed Lands, 1801. • Sinclair, Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. viii. p. 568. 7A.L.W., Ven. III. xxv.; Dim. xxv. 1, 2. 8 All land is open to the swine from the feast of St John to the Calends of January, except the meadows, which are closed during this time. A.L.W. Ven. III. xxv. 26, 27. A.L.W., Ven. III. xxv. 10. 10 A.L. Irel., i. 175, Comm. ments of Co-Tenancy, A.L. 14 A.L. Irel., iv. 77, 113. 9 In 12 Judg The definition looks late, to my mind. 15 A.L. Irel., iv. 87. 13 A.L. Irel., iv. 77. 16 A.L. Irel., iv. 104. CHAPTER XXI DRIVING OUT THE SMALL FREEHOLDER. EASEMENTS Copyholds and Customary Freeholds in England.-As land became more valuable, and the economic conditions changed, efforts were made to seize the communal rights of customary tenants in the soil. The dealings with the waste affected the small freeholder, as well as the unfree man, who afterwards, becoming a copyholder, was almost at the mercy of his lord in that respect. The consideration of this subject, and of the common rights of each co-owner against the |