PREFACE 



The papers here printed furnish materials which are of con- 

 siderable assistance for the study of one great department of 

 English rural life. During the Middle Ages the management of 

 land was collective, as it was carried on by the co-operation of the 

 lord and the various tenants within the manor. So far as tillage is 

 concerned, we are fairly informed, as we can picture to ourselves 

 the open fields with their intermingled strips, and know from the 

 surveys of many manors the precise obligations in week-work and 

 boon work which the villeins were bound to render, and the 

 amount of free time which they had for their own holdings. But 

 the information we possess about the management of the common 

 waste is apt to be scrappy and incidental. It must have been a 

 matter of supreme importance in every manor, as the inhabitants 

 were always dependent on the waste for the pasturing of the stock 

 with which they worked their land ; and they might rely on it for 

 building materials and fuel as well. In those districts where, from 

 the conditions of climate and soil, cattle feeding and dairy farming 

 were specially remunerative, the good management of the resources 

 of the common waste must have been a far more important factor 

 in the prosperity of a township than the tillage of the common 

 fields. Much of the land on the south west of the fens, which lies 

 along the valleys of the Cam and the Ouse, between Cambridge 

 and Ely, was peculiarly adapted for pasturage and was of no use 

 for tillage. Here the collective management of the common 

 waste survived in a fashion, which is interesting as a matter of 

 local history, while it is still more important as an illustration of a 

 system which was once generally prevalent and has now died out. 



