the immutable character of ancient agrarian arrangements. If we take up
a map of a common field drawn in the eighteenth century, the lines that
we see upon it are in the main very old. The scheme seems fashioned for
the purpose of resisting change and compelling the men of one age to
till the land as their fathers tilled it. Nothing but an unanimous
agreement among those who are not likely to agree can break up that
prison-house of cells in which agriculture has been cramped and
confined. Rather, it may be, the student who is perusing the 'estate
map' and who is fascinated by the possession of a new tool for picking
historical locks, should warn himself that, though there has been
permanence, there has also been change, and that in a far-off time
changes of a certain sort came quickly. True that in the current of
agricultural progress there is a rapid acceleration as it flows towards
our own day. We may easily go back to an age when the introduction of a
new process or new implement was rare. On the other hand, if we fix our
attention on the map of any one village and contemplate its strips and
balks and virgates, the hazard involved in an assumption of their
antiquity will increase swiftly when we have left behind us the advent
of Duke William and are urging our inferential career towards Hengest
or, it may be, towards Cæsar.
[Rapidity of change in old times.]
Let us look, for example, at the changes that take place in some Essex
villages during the twenty years that precede the Domesday Inquest. The
following table shows them:
Villani Bordarii Servi Lord's Men's
teams teams
Teidana[1217], T. R. E. 5 3 4 2 4
T. R. W. 1 17 0 3 3
Waldena[1218], T. R. E. 66 17 16 8 22
T. R. W. 46 40 20 10 22
Hame[1219], T. R. E. 32 16 3 5 8
T. R. W. 48 79 3 4 12
Benefelda[1220], T. R. E. 10 2 7 3 7
T. R. W. 9 11 4 3 4
Wimbeis[1221], T. R. E. 26 18 6 3 21
T. R. W. 26 55 0 3 15
These are but specimens of the obscure little revolutions that are being
accomplished in the Essex villages. In general there has been a marked
increase in the number of _bordarii_, at the expense of the villeins on
the one part and the serfs on the other[1222], and this, whatever else
it may represent, must tell us of a redistribution of tenements, perhaps
of a process that substitutes the half-virgate for the virgate as the
average holding of an Essex peasant. The jar of conquest has made such
revolutions easy[1223].
[Devastation of villages.]
But, it will be said, though the 'bundles' of strips be cut in half, the
main features of the field remain constant. Let us, however, look at
Yorkshire, where for fifteen years an immense tract of land has been
lying 'waste.' Have we any reason to believe that when agriculture
slowly steals back into this desert there will be a mere restoration of
the defaced map? Surely not. If for a few years an 'open field' lies
waste, there will be no mere restoration. For one thing, many of the old
outlines will have utterly vanished. Even if the acres were already
divided by the so-called 'balks' (and we can not be sure that they
always were[1224]), the balk was but a narrow strip of unploughed sward
and would hardly be perceptible when the whole field was once more a
sheet of grass and weeds. For another thing, new settlers would probably
begin by ploughing only a small portion of the old field. It is likely
enough that their measuring rod would not be even approximately equal to
the rod employed in a previous century, and they would have ample
opportunity for the introduction of novelties, for the substitution of
three fields for two and for all that such a change implies. Now
William's deliberate devastation of the north is but one final and
grandiose exploit of an ancient kind of warfare. After his day agrarian
history becomes more stable because invasions cease and the character of
civil warfare changes. The strife between York and Lancaster, between
King and Parliament, passes like a thunderstorm over the fields; it
damages the crops; but that is all, and Bosworth 'Field' and Naseby
'Field' will next year be tilled in the same old way. A raid of the
Danes, a feud between Angle and Saxon, was a different affair. The
peasants fought. Men, women and children were sold as slaves. Also there
was deliberate devastation. 'They make a wilderness and call it peace.'
What else should they call it, when a foodless wilderness is the most
scientific of all frontiers? Readers of the English Chronicle will doubt
whether there is any village in England that has not been once, or more
than once, a deserted village. And if we must reckon with war, there is
famine also to be reckoned with. When in a few brief words the English
Chronicler tells us that in 1043 there was mickle hunger in the land so
that the sestar of corn sold for sixty pence and even more[1225], he
is, like enough, telling us of a disaster which depopulated many a
village and forced many a villager to bow his head for meat in those
evil days[1226]. Agrarian history becomes more catastrophic as we trace
it backwards.
[Village colonies.]
And, putting on one side the ravages of war and famine, we must call to
mind the numerous hints that our map gives us of village
colonization[1227]. Men did not make two contiguous villages at one time
and call them both Hamton. Names are given to places in order that they
may be distinguished from neighbouring places. So when we see two
different villages, called Hamton and Other Hamton, lying next each
other, we may be fairly certain that they are not of equal antiquity,
and it is not unlikely that the one is the offshoot and daughter of the
other[1228]. There are about one hundred and fifty Newtons and Newtowns
in England. Every instance of colonization, every new settlement in the
woods, gave scope for the introduction of novelties, such scope as was
not to be found in after days when men stood thicker on the soil and all
the best land was already tilled[1229].
[Antiquity of the three-field system.]
Therefore we must not trust a method of husbandry or a scheme of
land-measures much further than we can see it. Nothing, for example,
could be rasher than the assumption that the 'three-course system' of
tillage was common in the England of the seventh century[1230]. We have
a little evidence that it was practised in the eleventh[1231], perhaps
some evidence, that it was not unknown in the ninth[1232]. But 'the
two-course system' can be traced as far[1233], and seems to have been as
common, if not commoner, in the thirteenth century[1234]. If on a modern
map we see a village with 'trinity fields,' we must not at once decide
that those who laid them out sowed two in every year, for it is well
within the bounds of possibility that two were left idle[1235]. An
agriculture of this kind was not unknown in the Yorkshire of the
fourteenth century[1236], and indeed we read that in the eighteenth 'one
crop and two fallows' was the traditional course in the open field of a
Suffolk village[1237].
[Differences between the different shires.]
We have time enough on our hands. Between Domesday Book and the
withdrawal of the legions lies as long an interval as that which
separates the Conqueror from Mr Arthur Young. Also we have space enough
on our hands. Any theory that would paint all England as plotted out for
proprietary and agricultural purposes in accordance with a single
pattern would be of all theories the least probable. We need not
contrast Kent with Westmoreland, or Cornwall with Norfolk, for our maps
seem to tell us that Somerset differed from Wiltshire and Dorset. The
settlement of a heathen folk loosely banded together under a war-lord
was one thing; the conquest of a new province by a Christian king who
was advised by foreign bishops and had already been taught that he had
land to 'book,' would be another thing. If, as seems possible, we read
in Ine's laws of a 'plantation' of some parts of Somerset effected by
means of large allotments made to the king's gesiths, who undertake to
put tillers on the soil[1238], we must not at once infer that this is an
old procedure, for it may be very new, and may have for its outcome an
agrarian arrangement strikingly unlike that which existed in the heart
of the older Wessex.
[New and old villages.]
Moreover there are upon the face of our map many cases which seem to
tell us that in the oldest days the smallest district that bore a name
was often large, and therefore that the territory which subserved a
single group of homesteads was often spacious. One example we will take
from Norfolk. We find a block of land that now-a-days consists of eleven
parishes, namely, Wiggenhall St. Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall St.
German, Wiggenhall St. Peter, Wiggenhall St. Mary Magdalen, Tilney cum
Islington, Tilney All Saints, Tilney St. Lawrence, Terrington St.
Clement, Terrington St. John, Walpole St. Peter, Walpole St.
Andrew[1239]. In such a case we can hardly suppose that all these
villages belong to the same age, even if we are not entitled to infer
that the later villages were not founded until the day for parish
churches had arrived. This being so, it is highly probable that some
villages were formed at all stages of the feudalizing process, and
therefore that a historical account of 'the' English township, or even
of 'the' English nucleated village, would of necessity be untrue. And,
while this East Anglian specimen is still before us, we may notice
another interesting trait. In the Marshland Fen there is a considerable
tract of ground which consists of 'detached portions' of these and other
villages. Each has been given a block there, a fairly rectangular block.
At one point the partition is minute. A space of less than 36 acres has
been cut up so that no less than six villages shall have a piece, a
rectangular piece of it[1240]. It seems very possible that this fen has
at some time been common ground for all these villages, and, as already
said, it is in this quarter that we may perhaps find traces of something
that resembled the 'marks' of Germany[1241]. The science of village
morphology is still very young, and we must not be led away into any
discussion of its elements; but there is the more reason why we should
take to heart those warnings that it already gives us, because what we
can read of hides is to be found for the more part in documents
proceeding from a central power, which, for governmental and fiscal
purposes, endeavours to preserve fictitious continuity and uniformity in
the midst of change and variety. However, we must draw nearer to our
task.
[History of measures.]
As regards land measurement, we may be fairly certain that in the days
before the Norman Conquest there was little real, though much nominal
uniformity. The only measures for the size of things with which nature
has equipped the natural man are his limbs. For the things that he
handles he uses his thumb, span, cubit, ell; for the ground upon which
he walks, his foot and his pace. For large spaces and long distances he
must have recourse to 'time-labour-units,' to the day's journey and the
morning's ploughing. Then gradually, under the fostering care of
government, steady equations are established between these
units:--twelve thumbs, for instance, are to make a foot. Thus the
measures for land are brought into connexion with the more delicate
measures used for cloth and similar stuff. Then an attempt to obtain
some standard less variable than the limb may forge a link between
thumbs and grains of corn. Another device is the measuring rod. One rod
will represent the arm of an average man; a longer rod may serve to
mediate between the foot which is short and the acre or day's ploughing
which is large. In laying out a field in such wise that it shall consist
of equal pieces, each of which can be ploughed in a forenoon, we
naturally use a rod. We say, for example, that to plough a strip that is
4 rods wide and 40 long is a fair day's work. For some while there is
no reason why the rods employed in two neighbouring villages should be
strictly or even approximately equal[1242]. Taxation is the great force
that makes for standard land measures. Then a king declares how many
thumbs there ought to be in the cloth-ell or cloth-yard. At a later time
he actually makes cloth-ells or cloth-yards and distributes them,
keeping an ultimate standard in his own palace. Thenceforward all other
units tend to become mere fractions or multiples of this royal stick.
The foot is a third, the thumb or inch a thirty-sixth part thereof. Five
and a half cloth-measuring yards make a royal land-measuring rod. Plot
out a space which is four rods by forty, you will have an acre.
[Slow growth of uniformity.]
The whole story, if ever it be told at length, will be intricate; but we
believe that a general persuasion that land-measurements ought to be
fixed by law and by reference to some one carefully preserved standard
is much more modern than most people think. Real accuracy and the
establishment of a measure that is to be common to the whole realm first
emerge in connexion with the measurement of cloth and such like. There
is a delightful passage in the old Scotch laws which tells us that the
ell ought to contain 37 inches meted by the thumbs of three men, 'þat is
to say, a mekill man and a man of messurabill statur and of a lytill
man[1243].' We have somewhere read that in Germany, if a perch of
fifteen feet was to be manufactured, the first fifteen people who
chanced to come out of church contributed each a foot towards the
construction of the standard. At an early time, however, men were trying
to find some class of small things which were of a fairly invariable
length and hit upon barley-corns. This seems to have happened in England
before the Norman Conquest[1244]. Instead of taking the 'thoume' of 'a
man of messurabill statur' for your inch, you are to take three
barley-corns, 'iii bear cornys gud and chosyn but tayllis (i.e. without
the tails)'[1245]. But the twelfth century was drawing to an end before
any decisive step was taken to secure uniformity even in the measurement
of cloth. In Richard I.'s day guardians of weights and measures are to
be appointed in every county, city and borough; they are to keep iron
_ulnae_[1246]. At this time or a little later these _ulnae_, ells or
cloth-yards were being delivered out by a royal officer to all who might
require them, and that officer had the custody of the ultimate
standards[1247]. We may doubt whether the laws which require in general
terms that there shall be one measure throughout the realm had measures
of land in view[1248]. A common standard is not nearly as necessary in
this case as it is in the case of cloth. Even in our own day men do not
buy land by the acre or the perch in the same sense as that in which
they buy cloth or cotton by the yard. Very rarely will anyone name a
price for a rood and leave it to the other bargainer to decide which out
of many roods shall be included in the sale. Nevertheless, the
distribution of iron _ulnae_ was important. An equation was established
between the cloth measure and the land measure: five-and-a-half _ulnae_
or cloth-yards make one royal perch. After this we soon find that land
is occasionally measured by the iron _ulna_ of the king[1249].
[Superficial measure.]
The scheme of computation that we know as 'superficial measure' was long
in making itself part of the mental furniture of the ordinary man. Such
terms as 'square rod' and 'square mile' were not current, nor such
equations as that which tells us how 144 square inches make a square
foot. Whatever may have been the attainments of some cloistered
mathematicians, the man of business did not suppose that he could talk
of size without talking of shape, and indeed a set of terms which speak
of shapeless size is not very useful until men have enough of geometry
and trigonometry to measure spaces that are not rectangular
parallelograms. The enlightened people of the thirteenth century can say
that if an acre is _x_ perches long it is _y_ perches wide[1250]. They
can compare the size of spaces if all the lines be straight and all the
angles right; and for them an acre is no longer of necessity ten times
as long as it is broad. But they will not tell us (and they do not
think) that an acre contains _z_ 'square perches.' This is of some
importance to students of Domesday Book. Very often the size of a tract
of land is indicated by the length of two lines:--The wood or the
pasture is _x_ leagues (furlongs, perches, feet) in length and _y_ in
breadth. Now, to say the least, we are hasty if we treat this as a
statement which gives us size without shape. It is not all one to say
that a wood is a league long and a league wide and to say that it is two
leagues long and half a league wide. The jurors are not speaking of
superficial content, they are speaking of length and breadth, and they
are either giving us the extreme diameters of the irregularly shaped
woods and pastures, or (and this seems more probable) they are making
rough estimates of mean diameters. If we go back to an earlier time, the
less we think of 'superficial measure' the better[1251].
[The modern system.]
Let us recall the main features of our modern system, giving them the
names that they bore in medieval Latin.
_Linear Measure._
12 inches (_pollices_)=1 foot (_pes_); 3 feet=1 yard (_ulna_); 5·5
yards=1 rod, pole, perch (_virga_, _pertica_, _perca_); 40
perches=1 furlong (_quarentina_); 8 furlongs=1 mile (_mille_); 12
furlongs=1 _leuua_, _leuca_, _leuga_ (league)[1252].
_Superficial Measure._
144 square inches=1 square foot; 9 square feet=1 square yard; 30·25
square yards=1 square perch; 40 square perches=1 rood; 4 roods=1
acre[1253].
In the thirteenth century these outlines are already drawn; but, as we
have seen, if we are to breathe the spirit of the time, we ought to say
(while admitting that acres may be variously shaped) that the normal
acre is 4 perches in width and 40 perches (=1 furlong) in length. The
only other space that we need consider is the quarter of an acre, our
rood. That ought to be 1 perch in width and 1 furlong (=40 perches) in
length. The breadth of the acre is still known to all Englishmen, for it
is the distance between the wickets.
[The ancient elements of land measure.]
This system has been generated by the corelation of cloth-measures and
land-measures. If we are going back to remote times, we must expel the
cloth-measures as intruders. What then is left is very simple; it is
this:--the human foot, a day's ploughing and a measuring stick which
mediates between feet and acres. That stick has had many names. Our
arithmetic books preserve three, 'rod, pole or perch'; it has also been
known as a _gād_ or _goad_ and a _lug_: but probably its oldest name
is _yard_ (_gyrd_). It is of some importance that we should perceive
that our modern yard of three feet is not one of the very ancient
land-measures. It is a 'cloth-yard' not a land-yard. In medieval
documents the Latin name for it is _ulna_[1254], and probably the oldest
English name for it is _eln_, _elle_, _ell_. There seems to have been a
shifting of names. The measuring rod that was used for land had so many
names, such as _perch_, _rod_, _pole_, _goad_, _lug_, that it could
afford, if we may so speak, to dispense with the additional name of
_yard_, which therefore might stand for the much shorter rod that was
used by the clothiers. However, even in our own century men have been
speaking of 'yards of land' in a manner which implies that at one time a
yard, when mentioned in this context, was the same thing as the perch.
When they have spoken of a 'yard of land' they have meant sometimes a
quarter of an acre (our rood) and sometimes a much larger space. In 1820
a 'yard of land' means, we are told, a quarter of an acre in Wiltshire,
while in Buckinghamshire it stands for a tract which varies from 28 to
40 acres[1255]. This last application of the term we shall consider by
and by. A yard of land or rood of land (_rood_ and _rod_ are all one) is
a quarter of an acre, because an acre is four rods or 'yards' or perches
in width, and, when an acre is to be divided, it is always, and for a
very good reason, divided by lines parallel to its long sides. So though
the rood or yard of land may in course of time take other shapes and
even become a shapeless size, it ought to be a rod or 'yard' in width
and forty rods or one furlong in length.
[The German acre.]
So we start with the human foot, the day's ploughing and a rod. How much
borrowing there has been in this matter by race from race is an obscure
question. For example, the mediation of a rod between the foot and the
day's work is common to the Roman and the Germanic systems. Here the
similarity ends, and the vast differences which begin seem to have
exceedingly deep roots. We can not be content with saying that the Roman
puts two oxen in the plough and therefore draws short furrows, whereas
the German puts eight oxen and draws long furrows. There seems to be a
radical disagreement between them as to what a plough should be and what
a plough should do[1256]. To these matters we can make but the slightest
reference, nor dare we touch the problems of Celtic history. Somehow or
another the Germans come to the rule that generally an acre or day's
work should be four rods wide and, if possible, about forty rods
long[1257].
[English acres.]
[Small acres.]
It is very probable that in England this rule prevailed at a remote
time. Throughout the middle ages and on to our own day there have been
many 'acres' in England which swerved markedly from what had become the
statutory type, and in some cases a pattern divergent from the statutory
pattern became 'customary' in a district. But apparently these customary
acres commonly agree with the royal standard in involving the equation:
1 acre = 4 perches x 40 perches[1258]. In Domesday Book and thence
onwards the common Latin for _furlong_ is _quarentina_, and this tells
us of furrows that are forty perches long. It is when we ask for the
number of feet in a perch that we begin to get various answers, and very
various they are. The statutory number, the ugly 16·5, looks like a
compromise[1259] between 15 and 18, both of which numbers seem to have
been common in England and elsewhere. This is the royal equation in the
thirteenth century; it has been found near the middle of the
twelfth[1260]; more at present we cannot say. Short perches and small
acres have been very common in the south of England. In 1820 some
information about the customary acre was collected[1261]:--In
Bedfordshire it was 'sometimes 2 roods.' In Dorsetshire 'generally 134
[instead of 160] perches.' In Hampshire, 'from 107 to 120 perches, but
sometimes 180,' In Herefordshire, 'two-thirds of a statute acre,' but
'of wood, an acre and three-fifths or 256 perches.' In Worcestershire,
'sometimes 132 or 141 perches.' In Sussex, '107, 110, 120, 130 or 212
perches'; '_short acre_, 100 or 120 perches'; '_forest acre_, 180
perches,' Then as to rods, the 'lug or goad' of Dorsetshire had 15 ft. 1
in.; in Hertfordshire, 20 feet; in Wiltshire, 15 or 16-1/2 or 18. The
wide prevalence of rods of 15 feet can not be doubted, and it seems
possible that rods with as few as 12 feet have been in use[1262]. An
acre raised from a 12 foot rod would, if feet were invariable, be little
more than half our modern statute acre. Nowhere do we see any sure trace
of a rod so short as the Roman _pertica_ of ten _pedes_, though the
scribes of the land-books will give the name _pertica_ to the English
_gyrd_[1263].
[Large acres.]