v.] DISTRIBUTION OF LAND IN ENGLAND. 19 



munity of the Middle Ages, translated by Colonel 

 H. A. Ouvry, p. 3.) 



Now the period from "seed-time to harvest" 

 never can have terminated in England, as a general 

 rule, so early as the 13th of August. August is 

 mentioned as harvest-time in ancient records (as in 

 the Rectitudincs Singularum Personarum, see above 

 p. 3), and is still the harvest month in England. If 

 the cattle had been turned upon the cultivated lands 

 on the 13th of that month (as Nasse imagines they 

 were), the destruction of the wheat- and other grain- 

 crops must, in ordinary years, have been the con- 

 sequence. Besides, in Anglo-Saxon times the error 

 in the length of the Julian year had not occasioned 

 (as Nasse seems to suppose) a difference of twelve 

 days between the solar year and the calendar. If 

 we take A.D. 750 as the mean year of the Saxon 

 period, the difference would be only four days. So 

 that the Saxon 1st of August would then correspond 

 not with our present 13th, but our 5th of August a 

 date when the cutting of wheat- and other grain- 

 crops has not commenced, in ordinary years, through 

 a great part of England. In point of fact, the lands 

 subject to this custom described by Nasse were not 

 arable, but meadow; and they were inclosed not 

 from " seed-time to harvest," but until the second 

 hay-crop had been mown. The lands known as 

 Lammas Lands at the present day are, I believe, 

 invariably meadow. 



c 2 



