In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER 1 THE COMMUNAL COURTS SUMMARY The ViII or Township The Viii in Agriculture The ViII and Local Government The Viii and Criminal Law The Early Hundred The Later Hundred The Sheriff's Tourn: COurtl Leef The County Court The Suitorl in the County Court The Sheriffal Judge: Viscontial Writs The DelUne 0/the County THE VILL OR TOWNSHIP PAGE 83 84 85 86 87 89 89 90 91 92 93 Beginning at the very bottom of the scale, the lowest institution we find is the vill or township.l It is moreover the most complicated and obscure. Its history was possibly different in different parts of the country and is extremely difficult to disentangle from that of certain other institutions-the ecclesiastical unit of the parish. the social unit of the village, and the economic unit of the manor, which are all the subject of learned controversy. It would seem as if the typical Yill (if one can use the term of an institution which varied so greatly) would have looked something like this. There will be a little group of houses, sometimes in a cluster, and sometimes ranged along an ancient road. Nearby there will be the parish church, and in many cases there will be the hall 01' mansion of the lord of the manor, if it so happens that the vill coincides with a manor, which may 01' may not be the case; sometimes a manor consists of several vills; on the other hand, a vill may contain several manors. Surrounding it there wlll be two, or more usually three, large fields. Each of these fields wlll be divided into a large number oflong, narrow strips of about half an acre each, and every household in the village will own a greater or less number of these strips scattered irregularly through the fields. This system of scattered strips is very ancient and lasted long after the middle ages. It has been suggested that the method was imported by the Anglo-Saxons and was not native to England. The prehistoric field seems to have been a small 1 Maitland suggested that it would be II convenient pmctice to use" vill " to mean the tetcitory, and .. township" to mean the inhabitants; Pollock and Maitland, i. 563. 83 84 THE COURTS AND THE PROFESSION irregular plot; the Celtic field which replaced it in England was apt to be oblong owing to the necessities of ploughing. It seems also to have been a peculiarity of Celtic agriculture to prefer hills or elevated ground, while the Saxons introduced valiey settlements. The Saxons, moreover , were accustomed to use the large team of eight! oxen to draw their ploughs; this, ofcourse, gave more power, but made turning more cumbersome. Consequently it became necessary to plough a much longer furrow in order to secure the advantage of the larger team, and hence the long narrow strips-but why they were scattered, has long been debated. It was never easy to believe that an egalitarian dogma was applied regardless of efficiency and convenience; more probably, those who co-operated in each day's ploughing took a share each, as the work proceeded from day to day.2 It is not uncommon for fields in England at the present day still to bear traces of these arrangements; on the hillside Celtic divisions may still be found represented by the banks caused by constantly ploughing the same plot, while lower in the valleys the long, narrow strips of the mediaeval field may be discerned. Photographs from an aeroplane are particularly useful in revealing these features.s THE VILL IN AGRICULTURE The one bond which holds the vill together is a system of communal agriculture. The machinery necessary was expensive, for the plough of eight oxen was often beyond the means of any individual villager, and so we find that the viII co-operated in the performance of a good many of the more difficult operations of farming. Besides this, after harvest the fields were thrown open and ali the villagers turned their cattle into them, as well a:> on to the field which for that year was remaining fallow (for the general system was to have two or three fields one ofwhich was left fallow each year). From what has just been said it will be obvious that there were many features of the agricultural life of the vill which would need regulation , and in spite of Maitland's doubts it seems now fairly clear that there...

Share