156 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND 



Otherwise the manure of the live-stock was wasted over the wide 

 area, which the animals traversed to find their scanty food. Unable 

 to provide whiter keep, and fettered by the common rights of 

 pasture which each of the partners enjoyed over the whole of the 

 arable land, farmers reared lambs and calves under every dis- 

 advantage. During the summer months, when the horses and 

 cattle were tethered on the unsheltered balks, they lost flesh and 

 pined in the heat. Ill-fed all the year round, and half-starved in 

 the winter, the live-stock dwindled in size. The promiscuous 

 herding of sheep and cattle generated every sort of disorder. The 

 common pasture was pimpled with mole-heaps and ant-hills, and, 

 from want of drainage, pitted with wet patches where nothing 

 grew but rushes. The scab was rarely absent from the crowded 

 common-fold, or the rot from the ill-drained plough-land and 

 pasture. No individual owner could attempt to improve his flock 

 or his herd, when all the cattle and sheep of the village grazed 

 together on the same commons. 



The open-field system was proverbially the source of quarrels. 

 Litigation was incessant. It was easy for men to plough up a 

 portion of the common balks or headlands, to shift their neighbour's 

 landmarks, or poach their land, by a turn of the plough, or filch 

 their crops when reaping. Robert Marmyng in his Handlyng Synne 

 (1303) had condemned the " fals husbandys " that " ere aweye 

 falsly mennys landys," and William Langland hi Piers Plowman 

 (1369) had denounced the ploughman who " pynched on " the 

 adjoining half -acre, and the reapers who reaped their neighbour's 

 ground. Tusser repeats the complaint of the mediaeval moralists 

 against the ' champion ' or open-field farmer : 



" The Champion robbeth by night, 



And prowleth and filcheth by day : 



Himself and his beasts out of sight, 

 Both spoileth and maketh away 



Not only thy grass but thy corn, 

 Both after and e'er it be shorn." 



Gascoigne in The Steel Olasse (1576) condemns the open-field farmer 



who 



"... set debate between their lords 



By earing up the balks that part their bounds." 



Joseph Lee repeats the charge. "It is," he says, " a practice too 

 common in the common fields, where men make nothing to pull up 

 their neighbour's landmark, to plow up their land and mow their 



