COMMONS AND COTTAGERS 169 



of Cheshunt was grazed not by the poor but by a parcel of jobbers. 

 The poverty of the pasture was often proved by the condition of 

 the stock. " It is painful to observe the very wretched appearance 

 of the animals," writes an anonymous author in The Farmer's 

 Magazine for May, 1802, " who have no other dependence but upon 

 the pasture of these commons, and who, in most instances bear a 

 greater resemblance to living skeletons than anything else." " The 

 stock," he continues, " turned out yearly into these commons con- 

 sists of a motley mixture of all the different breeds of sheep and 

 cattle at present known in the island ; many of which are diseased, 

 deformed, small, and in every respect unworthy of being bred from." 

 In theory, the commons enabled the cottagers, who occupied at 

 higher rents the ancient cottages which legally conferred the rights, 

 to supplement their wages by keeping a cow or two. But the 

 theory did not always agree with the practice. Often, if the 

 cottager had money enough to buy a cow, the cow could barely 

 find a living on land already overrun with sheep. The cottager's 

 profits from the commons mainly consisted in the use or sale of 

 turf, gorse, and brushwood which he cut for fuel, the run for a few 

 geese and a " ragged shabby horse " or pony. In theory, again, 

 the value of the commons to a small farmer, whose holding, whether 

 freehold, copyhold, or leasehold, was mainly arable, was inestimable 

 provided that he was near enough to make good use of the grass- 

 land. But, in fact, the value was often minimised by distance, by 

 the wretched condition of the undrained and over-stocked pasture, 

 and by the risk of infection to the live-stock. There can be no 

 question that, from an agricultural point of view, five acres of 

 pasture, added in individual occupation to the arable holding of 

 a small occupier, and placed near the rest of his land, would have 

 been a greater boon than pasture rights over 250 acres of common. 

 Some of the practical evils of open-fields and their attendant 

 pasture-commons might have been, with time, skill, and patience, 

 mitigated. In some districts the village farms were better managed 

 than in others. But even if the pressure of increasing population 

 and the difficulties of a great war had not necessitated immediate 

 action, the inherent defects of the system could not be cured. The 

 general description which has been given of open-field farming 

 applies to every part of the country. Scotland formed no excep- 

 tion to the rule. Scottish farmers, who are now reckoned among 

 the most skilful, were, in 1700, inferior in their management of land 



