THE 



WILTSHIRE MAGAZINE. 



AfULTORUM MAN) BUS GRANDE LEVATUR ONUS." — Onid. 



JUNK, 1900. 



JJotes an dommon junto in mxb aronnfc 

 Jnmngton. 



By Eev. C. S. Huddle. 



T is not only true that one half of the people in a country 

 do not know how the other half live, but that one generation 

 does not know how the generation before it lived. The people 

 have all passed away who remembered how all the cows of the 

 village, when they were let out after the morning milking, found 

 their way to the neighbourhood of the village pound, that in one 

 common herd they might be driven by the common cowherd of the 

 place to feed on the cow-down ; and that by the same man were 

 they driven back in the evening to the same spot and then left to 

 distribute themselves to their several owners. 



But this was, people said, when the land was held in trinity and 

 not, as now, in severalty. What they meant perhaps this paper 

 may explain. The greater part of the land in cultivation, even at 

 the beginning of this century — at least in South Wilts and in some 

 parts of Hampshire — lay in common fields. The common fields 

 were divided and sub-divided to a great extent. Every occupier, 

 but not always in proportion to his occupation, had a right to feed 

 so many sheep or horned cattle in the common flock or the common 

 herd. Shepherds, cowherds, hay ward, were a common charge. 



VOL. XXXI. NO. XOIII. B 



