22 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



bring.' What must remote country roads have been like when 

 these important highways were in this state? If members 

 of Parliament, rich men riding good horses, could not get to 

 London, how did the clumsy wagons and carts of the day 

 fare? The Church might well pity the traveller, and class 

 him with the sick 'and the captive among the unfortunates 

 whom she recommended to the daily prayers of pious souls.' l 

 Rivers were mainly crossed by ford or ferry, though there 

 were some excellent bridges, a few of which still remain, main- 

 tained by the trinoda necessitas, by gilds, by ' indulgences ' 

 promised to benefactors, and by toll, the right to levy which, 

 called pontage, was often spent otherwise than on the repair of 

 the bridge. 



A few of the old open fields still exist, and the best surviving 

 example of an open-field parish is that of Laxton in Notting- 

 hamshire. 2 Nearly half the area of the parish remains in the 

 form of two great arable fields, and two smaller ones which are 

 treated as two parts of the third field. The different holdings, 

 freehold and leasehold, consist in part of strips of land scattered 

 all over these fields. The three-course system is rigidly 

 adhered to, first year wheat, second year spring corn, third 

 year fallow. 



In a corner of the parish is Laxton Heath, a common covered 

 with coarse grass where the sheep are grazed according to a 

 ' stint ' recently determined upon, for when it was unstinted 

 the common was overstocked. The commonable meadows 

 which the parish once had were enclosed at a date beyond any- 

 one's recollection, though the neighbouring parish of Eakring 

 still has some. There are other enclosures in the remote parts 

 of the parish which apparently represent the old woodland. 

 The inconvenience of the common-field system was extreme. 

 South Luffenham in Rutland, not enclosed till 1879, consisted of 



1 Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life, p. 89. 



2 Gilbert Slater, The English Peasantry and the Enclosure of Common 

 Fields, p. 8. 



