3o6 History of the English Landed Interest. 



a second iu the plain champaign ^ country where each person 

 was, or should be, stinted according to the size of his holding ; 

 and the third, the lord's waste, where he alone was unstinted. 

 This practice of stinting on common pasturage was no doubt 

 salutary for the poorer cattle owners, for without some such 

 restriction the wealthier tenant would have bought up all the 

 stock he could lay hands on in the spring, run them tlu'ough 

 the summer on the common pasture, and fattened them off for 

 market on his own aftermath, meanwhile leaving the first- 

 named pasturage too bare to support the other livestock, viz. 

 a few beasts which belonged to each poorer tenant. As regards, 

 however, the waste, its lord who considered himself sole owner, 

 refused to be hampered by any such restrictions, and stinted 

 the rest of the community's cattle, or charged a capitation 

 penny for every hog's pannage, without incurring any imputa- 

 tion for rapacity. 



All this, however, was not in itself contrary to the principles 

 of communal agriculture as modified by the manorial system. 

 The time however had arrived wdien shrewd observers, both on 

 the Continent and in England had begun to see defects in the old 

 ])opular method of agricultural economy. Under a sense of 

 fairness the original distribution of each individual's holding 

 had been, as already stated, scattered throughout the great 

 common field of the township. Now however it was seen that 

 enclosed lands w^ould pay a farmer better. The *' acres," taking 

 the word in its original sense, would be more servicable all in 

 juxtaposition and surrounded by one common fence, than as 

 they were then, widely separated. But in order to make the 

 alteration, popular rights of common husbandry would be 

 seriously affected, if not destroyed. Isolated attempts to alter 

 the common field system brought up the whole question of 

 landed economy. In the first quarter of the sixteenth century 

 the German peasantry rose in multitudes and demanded the 

 abolition of serfdom, the restoration of all the ancient popular 

 lights over waste and forest, and the appropriation of the tithe, 

 after maintenance of the clergy, to the support of the poor. 

 Kobert Ket, the tanner of "Wymondham, imitating the example 



' Champaign or campaign signifies open couLtry. 



