2 THE MANORIAL SYSTEM 



twain " no contemporary mark of the hand of man but the 

 gallows and their appendages. Yet here are to be found traces of 

 numerous villages. Scored on the sides of the Wiltshire, Dorset, 

 Hampshire, and Sussex downs, " Lynches," " Lynchets," or 

 " Daisses," grass-grown terraces or benches, still run horizontally, 

 one above the other, along the slopes. The " elf-furrows " of Scot- 

 land seem to record a similar occupation of hill sites. Local 

 tradition attributes their formation to spade husbandry. Marshall, 

 in 1797, suggested, but only to reject, the operation of the plough. 

 Fifty years later, Poulett Scrope adopted a similar suggestion ; 

 more recently Seebohm revived the same theory. Whatever 

 explanation of the formation of these terraces may be correct, 

 they indelibly indicate the sites of the earliest settlements, and 

 the nature of the soil first selected for tillage. 



The most primitive form of agriculture is that known as " wild 

 field-grass " husbandry. Joint occupation and joint tillage were 

 probably its characteristics, as they afterwards were of tribal or 

 village communities. The essential difference lies in this. In the 

 open fields of the village, pasturage and tillage continue to be 

 separated ; grass-land always remains meadow or pasture ; it is 

 never broken up for tillage. Under the more primitive form of 

 convertible husbandry, fresh tracts of grass were successively 

 taken in, ploughed, and tilled for corn. As the soil became ex- 

 hausted, they reverted to pasture. Such a practice may belong to 

 some portions of the Celtic race, or to nomadic stages of civilisa- 

 tion. In 1804 Marshall thought that he could trace the " wild 

 field -grass " system in a custom of the south-western counties. In 

 some districts lords of the manor enjoyed rights of letting portions 

 of the grass commons to be ploughed up, cultivated for corn, and 

 after two years thrown back into pasture. Over the whole country, 

 from the Tamar to the eastern border of Dorsetshire, he found 

 that open commons, such as the wide expanse of Yarcombe and 

 the hills above Bridport, which from time immemorial had never 

 known the plough, were distinctly marked with the ridge and 

 furrow. Other features of rural life, which a century ago were 

 more peculiar to the south-west of England, suggest that arable 

 tillage by village communities, if it ever prevailed in this district, 

 was soon exchanged for a system of convertible husbandry better 

 suited to a damp climate. The cultivated land is divided into 

 little patches by the high Devonshire earthwork, or hedge ; the 



