Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) EditionReilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776: June 2011 (Sixth) Edition
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
Circles of big stones like Stonehenge were rebuilt so that the sun's
position with respect to the stones would indicate the day of longest
sunlight and the day of shortest sunlight. Between these days there was
an optimum time to harvest the crops before fall, when plants dried up
and leaves fell from the trees. The winter solstice, when the days began
to get longer was cause for celebration. In the next season, there was
an optimum time to plant seeds so they could spring up from the ground
as new growth. So farming gave rise to the concept of a year. Certain
changes of the year were celebrated, such as Easter, named for the
Goddess of the Dawn, which occurred in the east (after lent); May Day
celebrating the revival of life; Lammas around July, when the wheat crop
was ready for harvesting; and on October 31 the Celtic eve of Samhain,
when the spirits of the dead came back to visit homes and demand food or
else cast an evil spell on the refusing homes; and at which masked and
costumed inhabitants representing the souls of the dead paraded to the
outskirts of the settlements to lead the ghosts away from their homes;
and at which animals and humans, who might be deemed to be possessed by
spirits, were sacrificed or killed perhaps as examples, in huge bonfires
[bonefires] as those assembled looked out for spirits and evil beings.
There was an agricultural revolution from the two-field system in which
one field was fallow to the three-field system, in which there were
three large fields for the heavy and fertile land. Each field was
divided into long and narrow strips. Each strip represented a day's work
with the plough. One field had wheat, or perhaps rye, another had
barley, oats, beans, or peas, and the third was fallow. It had been
observed that legumes such as peas and beans restored the soil. These
were rotated yearly. There was a newly invented plough that was heavy
and made of wood and later had an attached iron blade. The plough had a
mould-board which caught the soil stirred by the plough blade and threw
it into a ridge alongside the furrow dug by the plough blade. This
plough was too heavy for two oxen and was pulled by a team of about
eight to ten oxen. Each ox was owned by a different man as was the
plough, because no one peasant could afford the complete set. Each
freeman was allotted certain strips in each field to bear crops. His
strips were far from each other, which insured some very fertile and
some only fair soil, and some land near his village dwelling and some
far away. These strips he cultivated, sowed with seed, and harvested for
himself and his family. After the harvest, they reverted to common
ownership for grazing by pigs, sheep, and geese. As soon as haymaking
was over, the meadows became common grazing land for horses, cows, and
oxen. Not just any inhabitant, but usually only those who owned a piece
of land in the parish were entitled to graze their animals on the common
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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