The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common FieldsSlater, Gilbert
History
The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common Fields
Slater, Gilbert
Agriculture -- England; Inclosures; Peasants -- England; Village communities -- Great Britain
A remarkable fact is that all the “lands” were scrupulously separated
from one another by meres or balks of turf, which, however, were not
known by these names. Among the people they were, and are, known as
“walls,” but in the court-rolls one finds the term “lanchetts,” which
one connects with “lynches,” and “land-shares,” which seems to explain
the term “launchers” which I have found in Devonshire. In the level
parts of the fields the “walls” were mere strips of turf about a foot
wide; but in the sloping parts they formed steep banks, sometimes
several feet high, and the successive “lands” formed terraces one above
the other.
All the cultivators, except the tenants of the two manor farms, were
copyholders, holding for a tenancy of three lives, the widow of the
holder having the right to continue the holding during the period of
her widowhood. By the custom of the manor the lessee of the manor had
at any time (even though his lease had but a day to run) the right to
grant a copyholder two lives, _i.e._, to accept a fine and substitute
two new names for those of dead or dying persons on the “copy.”
The copyholds, when not “cotes” or simply cottages with common rights,
were either “half-livings,” “livings,” or, in one or two cases, other
fractions of a living. A half-living consisted of four or five nominal
acres in each of the common fields, and common rights upon the meadow,
common fields and common down, in Stratton, for one horse, two cows,
and forty sheep. A whole living consisted of a share about twice as
large in the field and meadow, and a common right for two horses,
four cows, and eighty sheep. But each copyhold, whether a whole or
half-living, included one dole and one new close. There were three
whole livings and twelve half-livings in Stratton, and five “cotes,”
_i.e._, cottages with one or two strips of land in the arable fields
attached to them. In Grimstone there were four whole livings, six
half-livings, one three-quarters living, and one whole and a-quarter
living. In either manor, therefore, if we reckon two half-livings as
equal to one whole, there were nine whole livings in all; those of
Stratton being normally held by fifteen copyholders, those of Grimstone
by twelve, though the number might happen in practice to be less. Thus
at the time of the tithe commutation (1838) there was in each manor one
copyholder who had two half-livings. In all formal documents a “living”
is termed a “place,” and a half-living a “half-place.” The common
rights attached to a living in Grimstone were slightly different from
those in Stratton. They are further explained below.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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