SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



as they were called, formed the food of the people in the winter months. 

 In consequence we find salt-pans flourishing at an early date around Billing- 

 ham and South Shields, but as the salt was obtained by the evaporation of 

 sea-water and was not purified, it is easy to understand that the salted flesh, 

 and still more the salted fish, was neither a palatable nor healthy food, and the 

 scurvy and plagues of mediaeval England resulted. 



The lord had his own shepherd, and often his own sheep-farm, but it 

 was otherwise with the villagers, who had generally only one or two cows or 

 horses and a dozen sheep or pigs. Hence we find the village shepherd and 

 the village swineherd often referred to. They were not very important in 

 the village, and although we find frequent orders by the halmote court that a 

 shepherd or a swineherd should be appointed by a particular village,^ the 

 order was successfully defied in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 

 Instead we find regulations that each tenant should take his turn at guarding 

 the sheep or pigs,^ that pigs should have rings through their noses,' that no 

 beast should be allowed to wander about without an attendant (hirsill),* and 

 similar praiseworthy orders, which, as usual, were not carried out. We are 

 told that no one might pasture beasts without licence from the reeve, ^ and 

 that he might not exceed the number he was entitled to.' In the case of the 

 cotmen, they might not turn out more than five sheep or one ox,^ and they 

 seem to have been treated in rather a high-handed manner by their wealthier 

 neighbours.' The common shepherd or swineherd implied also a common 

 sheep-fold or pig-stye, the manure from which was claimed by the lord ; but 

 in the fourteenth century the lord was apparently unable to enforce the rule 

 that each vill should have a common sheep-fold.' 



The pasture or waste formed the outermost of the three concentric zones 

 into which the mediaeval vill was divided. The central zone was taken up 

 by the arable land, which consisted of three great open fields, cultivated year 

 by year in an unvarying rotation. One field lay fallow each year, and the 

 second field was sown wholly or mainly with wheat. The third field would 

 then be sown with barley or oats, or with a mixed crop, including peas and 

 beans or vetches. The following year the fallow field was devoted to wheat, 

 the former wheat field to the barley or mixed crops, and the third field was 

 left fallow. Round each field ran a hedge and a ditch to keep out straying 

 cattle, but when the crop had been gathered the fences were thrown down, 

 both in the corn lands and the hay fields, and the village cattle might pasture 

 in all fields during the winter months, and in the fallow field all the year 

 round. No man, however, might take beasts into the corn field, except 

 draught cattle, and under no pretext might he tether a horse or an ox there 

 for the night. 



The fields themselves would have presented a strange sight to the modern 

 farmer. They were divided longitudinally into oblong blocks known as 

 sheths (? sheaths) or flattes, which were parted from each other by paths and 

 ' balks,' or ridges of unploughed turf. Each sheth was divided into a number 

 of strips called ' rigs ' or ' selions,' which ran parallel to its shorter sides, and 

 between every two rigs ran a balk or ridge of equal length. It was a grave 



' Dur. Halmote R. (Surtees Soc. Ixxxii), Ii6, 149. ' Ibid. 161. ' Ibid. 50. 



* Ibid. 44. ' Ibid. 143. ' Ibid. 144. 



' Ibid. 145. ' Ibid. 24. ' Ibid. 27, 3 i, 1 12, &c. 



195 



