But not only on the surface of the land, but in the present distribution of the fields and " closes " constituting a farm, the effect of its common open fields may be traced. Taking any manor as a centre we find the farms of which it is composed not consisting only of solid blocks (as in the newly-settled land of the United States), but of a number of little fields scattered about in the most "admired disorder," and at a considerable distance from one another. Of the present inconvenience and want of economy involved in the arrangement of farming land there can be no doubt from the modern agricultural standpoint, and if a tabula rasa could be made of the land such a wasteful method of distribution would never be adopted. The inference is plain that this irregular straggling scattered ownership and occupation of the land must be a survival from a past custom of which the inner meaning has been lost. The great merit of Mr. Seebohm's work is that he provides a key for the explanation of this peculiarity, and whatever modifications may be found necessary with further research this explanation is certainly at any rate a most valuable working hypothesis. Evidence of the full existence of the open-field' system is easily perceived as far back as the 16th, 15th, and 14th centuries. We have the literary remains of the great agricultural controversy, in the two former centuries, on " champion " and "several " already alluded to, and for the 14th century we have the graphic touches of Piers Plowman in describing his " fair felde " full of all sorts of folk. Then through a series of documents such as the Winslow Manor Rolls (reign of Edward the Hundred Rolls (Edward I.), the records of various abbeys, the Bolden Book (1183 A.D.), we are taken back to the great Domesday Survey (1086 A.D.) So far the result of the evidence is certainly to show that the further we go back the more clearly do we discover the wide prevalence of the open-field system and cultivation in common. Up to the time of Domesday at any rate, Mr. Seebohm may be admitted to have proved his case, and it will be convenient in this short summary at this point to abandon the retrogressive chronological method and to notice the principal features of the system at the time of the Conquest and the processes and causes of its decay.
At the completion of the Conquest there were certainly manors everywhere, some belonging to the king, others to great barons and prelates, and others to the mesne tenants of these greater lords (cp. Madox, Exchequer). Some lords held many manors and were represented by a steward or REEVE (villicus). The typical MANOR was a manorial lord's estate with a village or township upon it under his jurisdiction and held in the peculiar system of serfdom known as villenagePassing now to the internal economic constitution of one of these manors and leaving the legal difficulties on one side, we observe that the arable land was divided into the lord's demesne and the land in villenage. The whole of the arable land was in three great open fields, and the demesne land was interspersed with the villain's land. For the present purpose the liberi homines may be omitted, and we may observe that there were three classes of tenants in villenage, namely villani (proper), cotariior bordarii (cottagers), and servi (slaves). The chief interest attaches to the villeins. The typical villein holding was a virgate or yardland, and a Virgate normally consists of thirty acres, namely ten of the long-acre stripe in each of the three great open fields. It has
been calculated (Seebohm, p. 102) that about 5,000,000 acres were under the plough in the counties named in the survey, about half being held by the villeins.
The normal virgate was an indivisible bundle of strips of land passing with the homestead by regrant from the lord to a single successor. There were also rights to certain use of meadow and waste. The virgates with their homesteads were sometimes called for generations by the family name of the holder. The central idea of the system was to keep up the services of various kinds due to the lord of the manor, and the virgate was a typical family holding. The services consisted of so much WEEK WORK, generally three days, an uncertain quantity of boonwork (adprecem, precarious) at the will o f the lord, and certain payments, occasionally of money but more frequently in kind. There were also restrictions upon the personal freedom of the villeins, e.g. the lord's licence must be obtained on the marriage of a daughter, or the sale of an ox, etc., and no one could leave the land without the lord's assent.
The normal outfit of the VILLEIN was a pair of oxen, and the ploughing was usually done with a team of eight oxen. Thus even so far as the beasts were concerned the co-operation of at least four villeins was required. We find also that certain craftsmen held their virgates in virtue of their services to the village, and the principal wants of the community were satisfied by its own labour. Everywhere and in every. thing custom was in force limiting the nature and amount of the services and prescribing the times and methods of cultivation. The principal differences between the English village community at the Conquest and at the time of the Black Death (1349 A.D.) are to be found in the gradual break-up of these overpowering customs and the increasing scope given to individual enterprise and variety. The nature of the movement is shown by the increasing irregularity of the holdings and the departure from the normal type, by the progressive limitation of the services demanded and above all by the substitution of money payments for these services and payments in kind. This commutation in the mode of rendering tribute to the landowner was the most potent cause of economic progress in the mediaeval period. By the time of the BLACK DEATH the option at any rate of money payments had become usual. The landowner found his advantage in the greater efficiency of hired labour, and the villein had the power of benefiting himself by exceptional industry.
For a long time, however, the customary methods of cultivation prevailed, and, as pointed out above, the open fields remained down to the close of last century. The principal point to observe is that starting with the Conquest, economic and agricultural improvement has been closely connected with the disintegration of Village COMMUNITIES. The nature of this movement is, however, often overlooked, because a comparison is made at different times between different parts of the social scale, the modern farm labourer being compared to the villein with the virgate, to the apparent disadvantage of the former in spite of serfdom. But the true counterpart of the modern labourer was the mediaeval slave, and the villein corresponds to the modern small farmer or landowner.