THE ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY * * * * * * WORKS BY FREDERIC SEEBOHM. THE OXFORD REFORMERS--JOHN COLET, ERASMUS, AND THOMAS MORE: a History of their Fellow-Work. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVOLUTION. With 4 Maps and 12 Diagrams. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d. (_Epochs of Modern History._) THE ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY: Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry. An Essay in Economic History. With 13 Maps and Plates. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. CUSTOMARY ACRES AND THEIR HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE, being a Series of Unfinished Essays. 8vo. 12s. 6d. net. LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 39 Paternoster Row; London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. * * * * * * [Illustration: Reduced Tracing of the TITHE MAP of HITCHIN TOWNSHIP about 1816.] [Illustration: Reduced Tracing of a Hand Map of the scattered pieces (coloured red) belonging to W. Lucas Esq^{re}. in the townfields of Hitchin about 1750.] [Illustration: _Enlarged Plan of the normal acre strips in the open fields afterwards adopted as the statute acre._.] THE ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY Examined in Its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry An Essay in Economic History by FREDERIC SEEBOHM Hon.LL.D.(Edin.), LITT.D.(Camb.) D.LITT.(Oxford) REPRINTED FROM THE FOURTH EDITION (1905) Longmans, Green, and Co. 39 Paternoster Row, London Fourth Avenue & 30th Street, New York Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras 1915 All rights reserved DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON PREFACE. When I had the honour to lay the two papers which have expanded into this volume before the Society of Antiquaries, it was with a confession and an apology which, in publishing and dedicating to them this Essay, I now repeat. I confessed to having approached the subject not as an antiquary but as a student of Economic History, and even with a directly political interest. To learn the meaning of the old order of things, with its 'community' and 'equality' as a key to a right understanding of the new order of things, with its contrasting individual independence and inequality, this was the object which in the first instance tempted me to poach upon antiquarian manors, and it must be my apology for treating from an economic point of view a subject which has also an antiquarian interest.