The common field system was called “tenantry.”[55] The tenants ordinarily were occupiers of single “yardlands,” rented at about £20 a year each. A typical yardland consisted,[56] besides the homestead, of 2 acres of meadow, 18 acres in the arable fields, usually in 18 to 20 pieces, a right on the common meadows, common fields, and downs for forty sheep, and as many cattle as the tenant could winter with the fodder he grew.[57] His forty sheep were kept with those of his neighbours, in the common flock of the manor, in charge of the common shepherd. They were taken every day to the downs, and brought back every night to be folded on the arable fields, the usual rule being to fold one thousand sheep on a “tenantry” acre (but ¾ of a statute acre) per night. In breeding sheep regard was had to what may be termed folding quality (_i.e._, the propensity to drop manure only after being folded at night) as much as to quality or quantity of wool or meat.[58] [55] _Ibid._, p. 14. [56] Contrast with such farms those described by Cobbett 30 years later: “At one farm 27 ricks, at another 400 acres of wheat stubble in one piece, at a third a sheepfold about 4,000 sheep and lambs, at a fourth 300 hogs in one stubble, a fifth farm at Milton had 600 qrs. of wheat, 1,200 qrs. of barley of the year’s crop, and kept on an average 1,400 sheep” (pp. 363, 4, 5). “The farms are all large” (p. 361). [57] _Ibid._, p. 15. [58] _Ibid._, p. 61. On the enclosure of such a manor the common flock was broken up, and the position of the small farmer became untenable. It is true, says our author, that he has the convenience of having his arable land in fewer pieces; but if he has his 18 acres all in one piece instead of in 20, he cannot plough them with fewer than the three horses he previously ploughed with. Then he has no enclosure to put his horses in; he no longer has the common to turn them on. His right on the down would entitle him to an allotment of sheepdown of about 20 acres, perhaps two miles from home. This is too small for him to be able to take it up, so he accepts instead an increase of arable land. But now he has no down on which to feed his sheep, no common shepherd to take charge of his sheep, which are too few to enable him individually to employ a shepherd. He, therefore, must part with his flock and then has no sheep to manure his land; further, having no cow-common, and very little pasture land, he cannot keep cows to make dung with his straw. Lastly, the arable land being in general entirely unsuited to turn to grass, he is prevented from enclosing his allotment, and laying it down in pasture.[59] Obviously in such circumstances the small farmer, after for a few years raising diminishing crops from his impoverished arable land, must succumb, and in some cases help as a labourer to till his fields for another man, in other cases drift to the towns or enlist. [59] _Ibid._, p. 80.