CHAPTER I 



COMMUNISTIC FARMING. GROWTH OF THE MANOR. 

 EARLY PRICES. THE ORGANIZATION AND AGRICUL- 

 TURE OF THE MANOR 



WHEN the early bands of English invaders came over to 

 take Britain from its Celtic owners, it is almost certain that 

 the soil was held by groups and not by individuals, and as 

 this was the practice of the conquerors also they readily fell 

 in with the system they found. 1 These English, unlike their 

 descendants of to day, were a race of countrymen and farmers 

 and detested the towns, preferring the lands of the Britons to 

 the towns of the Romans. Co-operation in agriculture was 

 necessary because to each household were allotted separate 

 strips of land, nearly equal in size, in each field set apart for 

 tillage, and a share in the meadow and waste land. The strips 

 of arable were unfenced and ploughed by common teams, to 

 which each family would contribute. 



Apparently, as the land was cleared and broken up it was 

 dealt out acre by acre to each cultivator ; and supposing each 

 group consisted of ten families, the typical holding of 120 

 acres was assigned to each family in acre strips, and these strips 

 were not all contiguous but mixed up with those of other 

 families. The reason for this mixture of strips is obvious to 

 any one who knows how land even in the same field varies in 

 quality ; it was to give each family its share of both good and 

 bad land, for the householders were all equal and the principle 

 on which the original distribution of the land depended was 

 that of equalizing the shares of the different members of the 

 community. 2 



1 Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, p. 18; Medley, Constitutional 

 History, p. 15. 



2 Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 257. 



CURTLER JJ 



