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 (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)Seebohm, Frederic
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 (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)
Seebohm, Frederic
Village communities -- Great Britain
1. These then are first: that God's churches be entitled to
every right; and that every tithe be rendered to the old
minster to which the district belongs; and that it be then so
paid, both from a thane's _in-land_, and from _geneat-land_, so
_as the plough traverses it_.
«_Acres_ of tithe in Domesday Survey.»
There is very little reference in the Domesday Survey to the churches
and their tithes, but there happens to be one entry at least in which
there seems [p117] to be a clear reference to this practice of the
tithes being taken in actual strips and acres. It relates to the
church at _Wallop_, in Hampshire (the place from which the family
name of the Earls of Portsmouth is derived), and it states that 'to
the church there pertains one hide, also half of the tithes of the
manor, also the whole kirkshot. And of the tithes of the villani
xlvi. pence and _half of the acres_. There is in addition a little
church to which pertain _viii. acres of the tithes_.'[145]
It may be taken then as certain that the holdings in villenage in
the open fields of the Saxon 'hams' and 'tuns' were composed, like
the virgate of John Moldeson, in the manor of Winslow, centuries
afterwards, of strips scattered, one in this furlong and another in
that, all over the village fields; and it may be taken as already
almost certain that the scattering of the strips was in some way
connected with the order in which the strips were allotted in respect
of the oxen contributed to the village plough teams.
III. THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM OF CO-ARATION DESCRIBED IN THE ANCIENT
LAWS OF WALES.
«Strips taken in an order of rotation,»
The law that every tenth strip as it was traversed by the plough was
to be set apart for the tithe is certainly the clearest hint that
has yet been discovered of the perhaps annual redistribution of the
strips among the holdings in a certain order of rotation, [p118]
though it is possible of course that a redistribution being once
made, to make room for the acres set apart for the tithe, the same
strips might always thereafter be assigned to the tithe and to each
particular yard-land year after year without alteration.
«according to the oxen contributed.»
What is still wanted to lift the explanation already offered of
the connexion of the grades of holdings in the open fields and the
scattering of the strips in each holding, with the team of 8 oxen,
out of the region of hypothesis into that of ascertained fact is the
discovery if possible somewhere actually at work of the system of
common ploughing with eight oxen, and the assignment of the strips
in respect of the oxen to their several owners. Were it possible to
watch such an example of the actual process going on, there probably
would be disclosed by some little detail of its working the reason
and method of the scattering of the strips, and of the order of
rotation in which they seem to have been allotted.
«The system at work under the ancient laws of Wales.»
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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