Gilbert Slater

“ In all times the fading memories and traditions of the past have contributed to form in men’s minds the ideals of a possible better future state of society which are the inspiration of progress. The memories and traditions of the English village community, together with its visible relics in the form of commons, commonable meadows, and (rarely) common fields, have had their influence on the formation of the ideals of the Labour and Democratic movement of our country from the time of Cobbett onwards. Through historical research the past may become more definitely suggestive. ”

“ Four acres in the common arable field was implied, and this of course carried a right of common.
The exercise of this right, which appears to be most keenly valued, as it is found to persist in many parishes after all other traces of the common field system have died away, obviously opens the door to quarrels. It is not to be expected that all farmers should finish carrying their crops on the same day; and the position of the man who is behind all his neighbours, and so is standing between the commoners and their right of pasture, is not an enviable one. ”

“ This is an Act to deal with the economic cause of depopulating enclosures.
“Sundry persons have of late daily studied how to gather into few hands great multitude of Farms and great Plenty of Cattle, and in especial Sheep, putting such land as they can get to Pasture, and not to tillage, whereby they have not only pulled down Churches and Towns and inhanced the old Rates ... so that poor men are not able to meddle with it ... it is thought that the great occasions that moveth and provoketh those greedy and covetous people ... is only the great Profit that cometh of Sheep.” ”

“ At the same time, whatever reasons there may be for regretting the enclosure of our Common Fields, and for wishing that the interests of the humbler tillers of the soil had been more sedulously guarded on enclosure, in the main the process was inevitable. Common field Agriculture was a survival of customs and institutions which had grown up when each village lived its life to a great extent in isolation. ”

“ The villagers, however, say simply “Three: the wheat field, the bean field, and the fallow field.” The commonable meadows are, like the common fields, held in scattered strips intermingled; and are commonable after hay harvest. The rule in Eakring is that if one man only has any hay left on the meadows, the other commoners can turn in their cattle and relieve him of it; but if he can get a neighbour to leave but one haycock also, he is protected. ”

“ Far more important from a broad national point of view, is the enclosure of common fields—the enclosure, that is, of land previously cultivated according to a system which did not involve the separation of one holding from another by any tangible barrier. Enclosure of this sort, when suddenly effected, as by a Private Act of Enclosure, is rightly termed the extinction of a village community. ”

“ While the whole of this description of the ordeal that the farmers had to pass through is interesting, the point I desire here to emphasize is the need of a larger capital after enclosure. Those who had the requisite skill, knowledge, energy and capital survived the crisis; they were able to take up the farms which their weaker neighbours were compelled to relinquish; to send, in almost every case, a larger surplus of food from the lands of the parish to maintain the state and power of England, and to pay higher rents. ”

“ Another difficulty occasionally arose when high winds prevailed at harvest time. The great extent of the open fields, and the slightness of any opposition to the sweep of the wind, at such times allowed the corn to be blown from one man’s land, and scattered over his neighbours’. Indeed it recently happened that one year when peas had been chosen as the fallow crop, that a storm carried the whole crop to the hedge bordering the field, and so mixed together in inextricable confusion the produce belonging to thirty or forty different farmers. ”

“ It is therefore natural to attribute the whole year or every year lands of Norfolk, and the infields of Scotland, alike, to the influence of Saxon, Anglian or Danish conquest and settlement. If it is asked why the same agricultural feature was not more widely produced, the obvious answer is that when people of different races are mixed together in the occupation of the same villages, it is by no means certain that the agricultural customs which will afterwards prevail will be those of the conquerors, or of the race which is in the majority. ”

“ I do not think that much complaint can be made with regard to the administration of the Enclosure Acts since 1876 by the Board of Agriculture. By the provision of adequate allotment grounds and recreation grounds compensation is made to those villagers who can claim no specific rights of common; and though no doubt many of the owners of single common rights are dissatisfied with the plots of land assigned to them, there seems to be no reason for doubting that the Commissioners appointed have endeavoured to deal with rich and poor with equal fairness. ”

“ But it is also obvious that whereas we know that in some places, as in the Hebrides and in Russia, the idea of common occupation of the land persisted, after co-aration had ceased, and displayed itself in the form of periodic or occasional re-division of the arable land, it is equally possible for the permanent occupation of certain strips of land to be definitely allotted to some individuals, while the practice of co-aration is still persistent among other individuals of the same community. ”

“ In countries where it has never been the custom for labourers to keep cows, it would be very difficult to introduce it; but where no gardens have been annexed to the cottages it is sufficient to give the ground, and the labourer is sure to know what to do with it, and will reap an immediate benefit from it ... there should be as much as will produce all the garden stuff the family consumes, and enough, with the addition of a little meal, for a pig. I think they ought to pay the same rent that a farmer would pay for the land, and no more. ”

“ What we have, then, to ask is whether the priority of enclosure in the western counties is to be attributed entirely to the fact of their being devoted more to grass and less to tillage, or whether there was some difference in the primitive village community of the west which caused cultivated land to pass more easily into the condition of exclusive ownership and separate use. ”

“ In cases where the new enclosures are laid down to grass, all this becomes of tenfold force; to stock rich grass lands demands a far greater sum than open field arable; the farmer may not possess it; this has often happened, and drove them to seek other investments, giving way to new-comers more able to undertake the new system introduced; and if profit be measured by a percentage on the capital employed, the old system might, at the old rents, exceed the profits of the new; and this is certainly the farmers’ view of the comparison. ”

“ And if it were felt, no one would seriously urge that the hardly pressed farmer should be compelled to cultivate the land in a manner wasteful of labour, in order that more labourers might be employed. In the earlier part of the nineteenth century war, protection and a rapidly growing wealth and population so effectively encouraged tillage that attempted prohibition of conversion of arable to grass would have been superfluous. ”

“ Were there twenty tenants and as many fields, each tenant would think himself unjustly treated unless he had a proportionate share in each. This causes treble labour, and as they are perpetually crossing each other, they must be in a state of constant quarrelling and bad neighbourhood. In order to prevent any of the soil being carried to the adjoining ridge, each individual makes his own ridge as high as possible, which renders the furrow quite bare, so that it produces no crop, while the accumulated soil in the middle of the ridge is never stirred deeper than the plough. ”

“ After enclosure the comparatively few surviving farmers, enriched, elevated intellectually as well as socially by the successful struggle with a new environment, faced, across a deep social gulf, the labourers who had now only their labour to depend upon. In the early part of the nineteenth century, at any rate, it was almost impossible for a labourer to cross that gulf; on his side the farmer henceforward, instead of easily becoming a farm labourer if bankrupt, would rather try his fortune in the growing industrial towns. ”

“ I take it that Isaac Leatham, who, by the way, was a strong advocate of enclosure in general, meant that the open field was, on the whole, enjoyed in as beneficial a manner as if it were enclosed, because there still remained the great disadvantage that each occupier had his lands in widely scattered strips, and had to waste much time and labour in cultivating them ”

“ The stint regulates the number of sheep each commoner may graze upon the common according to the number he can feed on his other land in the parish. It was not adopted without opposition on the part of those whose privileges it restricted.
This brings us to the question, Who are the commoners? There are two sorts of claim by which a man may be entitled to common rights, and to a voice in such deliberations as those by which a stint is agreed to. One is by a holding in the common open fields, the other is by the occupation of a “toft-head.” A “toft” is not very easy to define. ”

“ The fallow crop might be pulse or turnips or other roots or anything else that seemed advisable; but it was essential to the farmers’ interests that they should agree upon some crop. For a tradition existed in the village that unless the farmers were agreed as to the crop to be sown on the fallow field, that field could be treated as though it really were fallow. It could be pastured on all the year by all the toft-holders, and any crop which any farmer might sow would be at the mercy of his neighbours’ cattle and sheep. ”

“ The enclosure of common fields, and the passing away of the English Village Community to make room for the agricultural organisation prevailing to-day, is a subject not merely of historical interest, but one which touches very closely some of the most vital national problems of the twentieth century. ”

“ The Isle of Axholme has been singularly successful in preserving the spirit of the common field system—social equality, mutual helpfulness, and an industrial aim directed rather towards the maximum gross produce of food than towards the maximum net profit ”