220 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



of miserable construction to be erected to the number of 

 several hundreds by the poorest, and in many instances the most 

 profligate, of the population. They were not regularly entered 

 in the rental account, but had a nominal payment fixed upon 

 them which was paid annually at the court leet. These cottages 

 were built on the sides of the roads and on the lord's waste, 

 which was gradually absorbed by the encroachment, which the 

 occupiers of these huts made from time to time by enclosing 

 the land that lay next them. These wretched holdings 

 gradually fell into the hands of a body of middlemen, who 

 underlet them at an extravagant rent to the occupiers; and 

 these men began to consider that they had an interest inde- 

 pendent of the landlord, and had at times actually mortgaged, 

 sold, and devised it. This abuse was also put an end to, the 

 cottagers being made immediate tenants of the landlord, to 

 their great gain, but to this day small aggregations of houses 

 in Shropshire called 'Heaths' mark the encroachments of 

 these squatters on the roadside wastes. This class, indeed, 

 has been well known in England since the Middle Ages. 

 Norden speaks of them in 1602, and so do many subsequent 

 writers. Numbers of small holdings exist to-day obtained in 

 this manner, and the custom must to some extent have 

 counteracted the effect of enclosure. 1 



The roads of England up to the end of the eighteenth 

 century were generally in a disgraceful condition. Some 

 improvement was effected in the latter half of the century, but 

 it was not until the days of Telford and Macadam that they 

 assumed the appearance with which we are familiar ; and long 

 after that, though the main roads were excellent, the by-roads 

 were often atrocious, as readers of such books as Handley 

 Cross, written in the middle of the nineteenth century, will 

 remember. 



Defoe in his tour in 1724 found the road between S. Albans 



1 See Hasbach, op. cit. pp. 77 sq. ; Annals of Agriculture y xxxvi. 497 ; 

 Scrutton, Commons and Common Fields, p. 139. 



