the crops began to grow in the arable fields and the grass in the meadows to spring, they were carefully fenced to prevent trespass of man and beast; and, as soon as the crops came off, the fields became common for all the village to turn their stock upon, the arable fields being usually common from Lammas (August 1) to Candlemas (February 2) and the meadows from July 6, old Midsummer Day, to Candlemas[11]; but as in this climate the season both of hay and corn harvest varies considerably, these dates cannot have been fixed.

The stock, therefore, besides the common pasture, had after harvest the grazing of the common arable fields and of the meadows.  The common pasture was early ‘stinted’ or limited, the usual custom being that the villager could turn out as many stock as he could keep on his holding.  The trouble of pulling up and taking down these fences every year must have been enormous, and we find legislation on this important matter at an early date.  About 700 the laws of Ine, King of Wessex, provided that if ’churls have a common meadow or other partible land to fence, and some have fenced their part and some have not, and cattle stray in and eat up their common corn or grass; let those go who own the gap and compensate to the others who have fenced their part the damage which then may be done, and let them demand such justice on the cattle as may be right.  But if there be a beast which breaks hedges and goes in everywhere, and he who owns it will not or cannot restrain it, let him who finds it in his field take it and slay it, and let the owner take its skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.’

England was not given over to one particular type of settlement, although villages were more common than hamlets in the greater part of the country.[12] The vill or village answers to the modern civil parish, and the term may be applied to both the true or ‘nucleated’ village of clustered houses and the village of scattered hamlets, each of a few houses, existing chiefly on the Celtic fringe.  The population of some of the villages at the time of the Norman Conquest was numerous, 100 households or 500 people; but the average townships contained from 10 to 20 households.[13] There was also the single farm, such as that at Eardisley in Herefordshire, described in Domesday, lying in the middle of a forest, perhaps, as in other similar cases, a pioneer settlement of some one more adventurous than his fellows.[14]

* * * * *

Such was the early village community in England, a community of free landholders.  But a change began early to come over it.[15] The king would grant to a church all the rights he had in the village, reserving only the trinoda necessitas, these rights including the feorm or farm, or provender rent which the king derived from the land—­of cattle, sheep, swine, ale, honey, &c.—­which he collected by visiting his villages, thus literally eating his rents.  The churchmen did not continue these visits,