1 86 History of the English Landed Interest. 



tlie year had balloted. Those numerous small ricks fenced off 

 from the mouths of hungry cattle, inform us that here it is the 

 manorial custom for the haycrop to be allotted to the various 

 claimants of the villeinage, whereas one great stack would 

 have shown that the lord claimed the crop and his tenants 

 only the aftermath. 



Running our eye along the " ings " on each side of the river, 

 it arrives at the mill, which probably belongs to the lord, un- 

 less, like that of the Prior of Holy Trinity in Wallingford. it is 

 held in frankalmoigne by the vicar, the round tower of whose 

 Saxon church dwarfs the manor chimneys and even the clumps 

 of trees on his glebe land. 



But our eye is now attracted to the " wistas," those narrow 

 lengths of cultivation on the " servile land " in which the 

 yellows of overripe wheat and barley crops form a strong con- 

 trast to the sepia colouring of the fallow ground. This is the 

 famous two-field system of husbandry, shortly to give way to 

 the better trinity system, when the lines of yellow and brown 

 tracts will alternate with the russet green of ripening pulse 

 crops. The owners of this portion of the manorial produce have 

 hitherto been too busy at boon service to find an opportunity 

 for their own harvest operations ; but as soon as the lord's corn 

 is in stack they will be hard at work, knowing that each day's 

 procrastination postpones the hour when their half-starved live 

 stock on the waste shall be allowed to roam at will over the 

 stubbles and fallows of the commonable land. As the breeze 

 waves aside for a moment the overshadowing corn, we catch 

 a glimpse of the rough herbage of the untilled " balks " and 

 " butts " which respectively divide and terminate these strips 

 of cultivation. Those odd corners of the arable fields which are 

 so difficult to plough, are called either crustce, pightels, gores, 

 fothers, pykes, no man's land, or Jack's land, and are occu- 

 pied by individual tenants. Roughly gauging areas with our 

 eye, we are able to proportion the land in villeinage and that 

 of the demesne at respectively two-thirds and one-third of the 

 whole. A few of the better dressed tenantry, possessors pro- 

 bably of whole virgates in the commonable land, appear to 

 be comparing in despondent tones the probable yield of their 



