Beyond the Midland field system: The determinants of common rights over the arable in medieval England

Agricultural History Review

Volumn 58, Issue PART 2, 2010, Pages 153-171

  Bailey, Mark ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 79951475774     PISSN: 00021490     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (213)

1. The classic works are F. Seebohm, The English village community (1883);
2. H. L. Gray, English field systems (1915);
3. C. S. Orwin, The open fields (third edn, 1967);
4. J. Thirsk, 'The common fields', Past and Present 29 (1964), pp. 3-25;
5. ead., 'The origin of the common fields', Past and Present 33 (1966), pp. 142-7;
6. A. R. H. Baker and R. A. Butlin (eds), Studies of field systems in the British Isles (1973);
7. C. J. Dahlman, The open field system and beyond. A property rights analysis of an economic institution (1980);
8. R. A. Dodgshon, The origins of British field systems. A re-interpretation (1980);
9. E. Kerridge, The common fields of England (1992). Among the new wave of works are
10. C. Lewis, P. Mitchell-Fox and C. Dyer, Village, hamlet and field. Changing medieval settlements in central England (1997);
11. B. K. Roberts and S. Wrathmell, Region and place. A study of English rural settlement (2002);
12. T. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes. Settlement, society, environment (2003);
13. S. Oosthuizen, 'The Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia and the origins and distribution of common fields', AgHR 55 (2007), pp. 153-80;
14. E. Martin and M. Satchell, 'Wheare most inclosures be'. East Anglian fields: history, morphology and management (East Anglian Archaeology, 124, 2008);
15. S. Rippon, Beyond the medieval village: the diversification of landscape character in southern Britain (2008);
16. M. Gardiner, 'Dales, long lands and the medieval division of land in eastern England', AgHR 57 (2009), pp. 1-14.
17. G. Astill, 'Fields', in G. Astill and A. Grant (eds), The countryside of medieval England (1988), p. 62.
18. B. M. S. Campbell and R. A. Godoy, 'Commonfield agriculture: the Andes and medieval England compared', in D.W.Bromley (ed.), Making the commons work: theory, practice and policy (1992), pp. 99-125,
19. repr. in B. M. S. Campbell, Field systems and farming systems in late medieval England (2008), p. 102.
20. D. Hall (ed.), The open fields of Northamptonshire (Northamptonshire Rec. Soc., 38, 1995), pp. 125-39;
21. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 5-21;
22. D. Hall, 'The origins of open field agriculture: the archaeological fieldwork evidence', in T. Rowley (ed), The origins of open field agriculture (1981), pp. 36-8;
23. R. Jones and M. Page, Medieval villages in an English landscape. Beginnings and ends (2006), pp.7, 92-6;
24. Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', p. 155. Before the introduction of open fields, arable land is presumed to have lain within closes,
25. see O. Rackham, The history of the countryside (1986), pp. 155, 161-4, 178;
26. S. Wade Martins, Farms and fields (1995), pp. 9-24.
27. Roberts and Wrathmell, Region and place, p. 136;
28. Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', pp. 161-2;
29. ead., 'New light on the origins of open field farming?' Medieval Arch. 49 (2005), pp. 182-3;
30. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and field, pp. 170-7, 22940;
31. H. S. A. Fox, 'Approaches to the adoption of the Midland system', in Rowley (ed.), Origins, pp. 98-102;
32. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 13-21.
33. J. Clark, J. Darlington and G. Fairclough, Using Historic Landscape Characterization: English Heritage's review of HLC applications (2004), p. 7.
34. 'The morphological characteristics of field systems ... are only one aspect of their substance. The relationships between the arable and the waste, the availability of fallow grazing over the arable, the arrangement of individual holdings, the regulation of cropping and the communal regulation of all these activities are all aspects of equal importance': Roberts and Wrathmell, Region and place, p. 2, my italics.
35. M. Bailey, 'The form, function and evolution of irregular field systems in Suffolk, 1300 to 1550', AgHR 57 (2009), pp.34-6.
36. T. Williamson, 'Historic Landscape Classifications: some queries', Landscapes 8 (2007), pp. 66-8.
37. See, for example, the reviews of Martin and Satchell, 'Wheare most inclosures be', in EcHR 62 (2009), pp. 1010-12, and AgHR 57 (2009), pp. 130-1.
38. For example, Oosthuizen, 'New light', pp. 165-90;
39. ead. 'The Anglo-Saxon kingdom', pp. 153-80;
40. Rippon, Beyond the medieval village;
41. Gardiner, 'Dales, long lands', pp. 1-14.
42. Fox, 'Approaches', pp. 83-4;
43. Oosthuizen, 'AngloSaxon kingdom', pp. 160-1. Manorial account and court rolls are essential for reconstructing how medieval fields operated, but they do not exist before c.1250.
44. Dahlman, Open field system, p. 29. Open and common fields emerged 'at times which are beyond the reach of documentary material which could throw any light at all upon the details of the process or upon earlier arrangements',
45. Fox, 'Approaches', p. 88.
46. The primary importance of considering form, function and evolution when reconstructing field systems, as opposed to a one dimensional interest in field morphology, is advocated in Baker and Butlin (eds), Studies, pp. 627-35.
47. T. Williamson, 'The distribution of woodland and champion landscapes in medieval England', in M. Gardiner and S. Rippon (eds), Medieval landscapes: landscape history after Hoskins (2007), pp. 92-3.
48. Forty years ago Alan Baker bemoaned that our understanding of fields is in danger of 'flounder[ing] on the rocks of terminological ambiguity': 'Some terminological problems in studies of British field systems', AgHR 17 (1969), p. 136.
49. Baker warned against using the terms 'open fields' and 'common fields' interchangeably, ibid., pp. 138-9,
50. and see also Baker and Butlin (eds), Studies, pp. 623.
51. A. R. H. Baker, 'The field systems of southeast England', in Baker and Butlin (eds), Studies, pp. 414-19;
52. B. M. S. Campbell, 'Agriculture in Kent in the Middle Ages', in S. Sweetinburgh (ed.), Later medieval Kent, 1220-1540 (forthcoming);
53. H. E. Hallam, Settlement and society. A study of the early agrarian history of south Lincolnshire (1965), pp. 137-61.
54. For studies of other irregular, common field, systems, see, for example, Baker, 'Southeast England', pp.393-429;
55. D. Roden 'Field systems of the Chiltern Hills and their environs', in Baker and Butlin (eds), Studies, pp. 325-62;
56. B. M. S. Campbell, 'Population change and the genesis of commonfields on a Norfolk manor', EcHR 33 (1980), pp. 174-92;
57. and Bailey, 'Form, function and evolution', pp. 15-36;
58. Baker, 'Some terminological problems', p. 139;
59. B. M. S. Campbell, 'Commonfield origins: the regional dimension', in Rowley (ed.), Origins, pp. 113-17, identified six different categories of common fields.
60. Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', pp. 154-6.
61. See also Martin and Satchell, 'Wheare most inclosures be', pp. 20-1, who consciously opt to describe 'open fields' as 'common fields'.
62. Orwin and Orwin, Open fields, p. 127;
63. Thirsk, 'Common fields', pp.3, 22-3.
64. 'Mature' is from Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', p. 160;
65. 'sophisticated' from D. Hooke, The landscape of Anglo-Saxon England (1998), pp. 129-30;
66. and Williamson uses both adjectives, Shaping medieval landscapes, p. 21.
67. E. Miller, 'Farming techniques: Northern England', in H. E. Hallam (ed.), The agrarian history of England and Wales, II, 1042-1348 (1988), p. 401.
68. See the studies listed in n. 18 above, and also M. Bailey, 'Sand into gold: the evolution of the foldcourse system in west Suffolk, c.1300 to 1600', AgHR 38 (1990), pp. 40-57;
69. G. A. Wood, 'Field arrangements in the West Riding of Yorkshire in the high Middle Ages' (University of Leeds, PhD thesis, 2003), pp. 109-245.
70. Quote from G. A. Wood, M. Purvis, and B. Harrison, 'Irregular field systems and patterns of settlement in western Yorkshire', in T. Unwin and T. Spek (eds), European landscapes: from mountain to sea (2003), p. 175, and the argument is developed more fully in Wood, 'Field arrangements', pp.7, 18, 22-4, 259-60.
71. See also Bailey, 'Form, function and evolution', pp. 15-17.
72. Campbell, 'Commonfield origins', p. 112. Compare the extent of the Midland field system against that of open fields in general mapped in
73. Oosthuizen, 'AngloSaxon kingdom', p. 155.
74. This implication underlies the discussions in Dahlman, Open field system, whose subject is actually the Midland system, and not - as indicated in the title of his monograph - open or common fields more generally; and Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', pp. 154-64.
75. T. De Moor, 'Avoiding tragedies: a Flemish common and its commoners under the pressure of social and economic change during the eighteenth centuries', EcHR 62 (2009), pp. 1-22.
76. Ibid., pp. 3-8.
77. Campbell and Godoy, 'Commonfield agriculture', pp. 113-14.
78. Campbell, 'Commonfield origins', p. 114.
79. Id., 'Population change', p. 175;
80. M. Bailey, A marginal economy? East Anglian Breckland in the later Middle Ages (1989), pp. 56-65;
81. Fox, 'Approaches to the adoption', pp. 72-6.
82. Fox, 'Approaches to the adoption', pp. 65-8, 726;
83. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and farm, pp. 170-5, 203-4.
84. The use of weak or strong to describe a CPrR implies that the latter is superior to the latter, and so is avoided here: instead, preference is given to 'narrow' or 'wide'.
85. Dahlman, Open field system, pp. 8, 26-7.
86. Useful general surveys of these processes are provided in Dodgshon, Origins, pp. 1-25;
87. id., 'The interpretation of subdivided fields', in Rowley (ed.), Origins, pp. 137-43;
88. Kerridge, Common fields, pp. 16-49;
89. Hall, Northamptonshire, pp. 125-8;
90. Campbell and Godoy, 'Commonfield agriculture', pp. 103-4;
91. and Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 8-21.
92. See Campbell, 'Population change', pp. 179-83, for a discussion of the way in which high population density and a permissive manorial regime could result in the extreme subdivision of open fields by c.1300.
93. Hall, 'Origins', pp. 36-7;
94. Hall, Northamptonshire, pp. 137-8;
95. Oosthuizen, 'New light', pp. 165-90;
96. Gardiner, 'Dales, long lands', pp. 1-14.
97. The development of open fields across tracts of land cleared early of woodland is emphasized by a number of scholars working on very different areas of England, such as Rackham, History of the countryside, pp. 75-8;
98. Hooke, Anglo-Saxon landscape, p. 116:
99. D. Hall, 'The late Saxon countryside: villages and their fields', in D. Hooke (ed.), Anglo-Saxon settlements (1988), p. 113;
100. A. J. L. Winchester, Landscape and society in medieval Cumbria (1987), p. 69.
101. See the summaries in Astill, 'Fields', pp. 77-84;
102. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 19, 53-60;
103. and Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', pp. 175-7.
104. D. McCloskey, 'English open fields as behaviour towards risk', in P. Uselding (ed.), Research in economic history, 1 (1973), pp. 154-62;
105. S. Fenoaltea, 'Risk, transaction costs and the organisation of medieval agriculture', Explorations in Econ. Hist. 13 (1976), pp. 134-49;
106. Dahlman, Open field system, pp. 124-45.
107. This is a subtly, but significantly, different question to asking why open fields became enclosed. The use of the word 'enclosed' reflects the assumption (and perhaps the prejudice) that closes were created by enclosing open fields, although closes were the original form of many fields.
108. J. Thirsk, 'Preface to the third edition', in Orwin and Orwin, Open fields, p. xv.
109. The demographic engine is also evident in Thirsk, 'Common fields', pp. 7-11;
110. Baker and Butlin (eds), Studies, pp. 648-9;
111. Hall, Northamptonshire, p. 138;
112. D. Hooke, 'Open field agriculture: the evidence from the pre-Conquest charters of the West Midlands', in Rowley (ed.), Origins, pp. 61-2;
113. ead., Anglo Saxon landscape, pp. 193-4. De Moor takes a similar line when suggesting that commercialization and population growth were most likely to increase 'violations' in the functioning of the commons, and to threaten the balance between arable and pasture. Indeed, she points to the period between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, when demographic pressure was peaking in medieval Europe, as the era when communities altered and greatly extended their CPrRs in an attempt to reconcile and manage such dilemmas,
114. De Moor, 'Avoiding tragedies', pp. 6-8, 18.
115. Dahlman, Open field system, pp. 141-5.
116. Thirsk, 'Common fields', pp. 3-24;
117. Fox, 'Approaches', pp. 68-72.
118. Baker and Butlin (eds), Studies, pp. 630-1;
119. Fox, 'Approaches', p. 94;
120. Dodgshon, 'Interpretation of subdivided fields', p. 142;
121. W. O. Ault, Open-field farming in medieval England. A study of village by-laws (1972), p. 17.
122. Thirsk, 'Common fields', pp. 7-11. An emphasis upon population growth driving changes to the Midland system is evident in
123. H. E. Hallam, Rural England, 10661348 (1981), pp. 116-17.
124. Thirsk, 'Common fields', pp. 23-4;
125. Winchester, Landscape and society, pp. 68-77;
126. Fox, 'Approaches', pp. 91-3.
127. Astill, 'Fields', pp. 64-5.
128. H. S. A. Fox, 'The alleged transformation from the two to the three field system in medieval England', EcHR 39 (1986), p. 529;
129. id., 'Approaches', pp. 72-88.
130. See also R. C. Hoffman, 'Medieval origins of the common fields', in W. N. Parker and E. L. Jones (eds), European peasants and their markets (1975), p. 49.
131. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and field, p. 227;
132. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 13-17.
133. Roberts and Wrathmell, Region and place, p. 136;
134. Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', pp. 171-5;
135. id., 'New light?', pp. 182-3.
136. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and field, pp. 213-16. Scepticism about the importance of demography is also expressed by
137. Kerridge, Common fields, pp. 47-9.
138. Campbell and Godoy, 'Commonfield agriculture', pp. 105-11.
139. Population densities in the late eleventh century are portrayed in Williamson, Shaping medieval landscape, p. 31.
140. H. C. Darby, The Domesday geography of eastern England (1952), pp. 117, 173, 330;
141. B. M. S. Campbell, 'Benchmarking medieval economic development: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, c.1290', EcHR 61 (2008), p. 929.
142. Baker, 'Southeast England', pp. 414-19;
143. Campbell, 'Population change', pp. 174-5;
144. id., 'Commonfield origins', pp. 119-23;
145. M. Bailey, Medieval Suffolk. An economic and social history 1200 to 1500 (2007), pp. 105-13.
146. Campbell, 'Agriculture in Kent';
147. Campbell, 'Commonfield origins', pp. 119-24.
148. Campbell, 'Population change', pp. 191-2.
149. Wood, 'Field arrangements', pp. 120-4.
150. For the extension of closes under the pressure of population, see, for example, R. H. Britnell, 'Agriculture in a region of ancient enclosure, 1185-1500', Nottingham Medieval Stud. 27 (1983), pp. 42-3;
151. Roden, 'Chilterns', pp.339-40;
152. C.Dyer, 'Conflict in the landscape: the enclosure movement in England, 1220-1349', Landscape Hist. 28 (2006), pp. 21-2, 30-1.
153. Bailey, 'Form, function and evolution', pp. 19-23.
154. Campbell and Godoy, 'Commonfield agriculture', p. 105.
155. 9 For the influence of soil,
156. see Astill, 'Fields', p. 63;
157. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes.
158. Ibid., pp. 142-3, 155-6.
159. Williamson, 'Distribution of woodland and champion', pp. 97-100.
160. Bailey, 'Sand into gold', pp. 43-55;
161. id., 'Form, function and evolution', pp. 19-23.
162. Roberts and Wrathmell, Region and place, p. 3. The area covered by irregular fields in six townships in eastern Norfolk varied between 57% and 95%,
163. Campbell, 'Extent and layout', p. 10.
164. Fox, 'Approaches', pp. 83, 93-4;
165. id., 'Alleged transformation', pp. 528-9.
166. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and field, p. 175;
167. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 22-3, 39-40;
168. H. S. A. Fox, 'Some ecological dimensions of medieval systems', in K. Biddick (ed.), Archaeological approaches to medieval Europe (1984), pp. 144-6.
169. Wood, 'Field arrangements', pp. 252-3.
170. H. S. A. Fox, 'The chronology of enclosure and economic development in medieval Devon', EcHR 28 (1975). p. 198.
171. The role of commerce is acknowledged in, for example, Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and field, pp. 218-21,
172. and Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon kingdom', pp. 171-5.
173. For eastern Norfolk and northeast Suffolk, see Campbell, 'The livestock of Chaucer's reeve: fact or fiction', in E. B. DeWindt (ed.), The salt of common life: individuality and choice in the medieval town, countryside and church (1995), repr. in his Field systems, pp. 271-305,
174. and Campbell, K. C. Bartley and J. P. Power, 'The demesne-farming systems of post-Black Death England: a classification', AgHR 44 (1996), pp. 131-79,
175. also repr. in Campbell, Field systems;
176. Bailey, Medieval Suffolk, pp. 68-73;
177. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 59-60, 173-8.
178. For south Huntingdonshire, see Gray, English field systems, pp. 70-1;
179. P. Bigmore, The Bedfordshire and Huntingdonshire landscape (1979), pp. 90-3, 17283;
180. M. P. Hogan, 'Clays, culturae and the cultivator's wisdom: management efficiency at fourteenth-century Wistow', AgHR 36 (1988), pp. 117-31;
181. and Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, pp. 72-9.
182. For the Breckland, see Bailey, Marginal economy?, pp. 40-85
183. and his 'Form, function and evolution', pp. 19-23.
184. Dodgshon, Origins, p. 151.
185. Quote from Roberts and Wrathmell, Region and place, p. 136.
186. Oosthuizen, 'Anglo-Saxon Kingdom', pp. 167-75.
187. Campbell and Godoy, 'Commonfield agriculture', p. 100.
188. Campbell, 'Population change', p. 192;
189. id., 'Regional uniqueness', pp. 25-8;
190. id., 'Commonfield origins', pp. 125-8;
191. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and farm, pp. 204-13.
192. Wood, 'Field arrangements', pp. 262-5.
193. S. Rippon, Landscape, community and colonization: the North Somerset Levels during the first to second millennia AD (Council for British Archaeology, Research Report 152, 2008);
194. id. 'Emerging regional variation in Historic Landscape Character: the possible significance of the "Long Eighth Century"', in Gardiner and Rippon (eds), Medieval landscapes, pp. 109-11, 120.
195. Wood, 'Field arrangements', p. 252.
196. This should be taken to imply that it is possible to reconstruct the function and the evolution of every local or regional field system, because it is simply not possible before c.1250, and even after that date it is entirely dependent upon the chance survival of sufficient manorial accounts and court rolls.
197. Dodgshon, Origins, p. 151;
198. Campbell and Godoy, 'Commonfield agriculture', p. 116.
199. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and farm, p. 238.
200. Williamson, Shaping medieval landscapes, p. 184;
201. Hall, Northamptonshire, p. 139. See the quote from Thirsk cited in n.39 above.
202. Bailey, 'Form, function and evolution', pp. 25-9.
203. Roberts and Wrathmell, Region and place, p. 143.
204. M. Harvey, 'The origin of planned field systems in Holderness, Yorkshire', in Rowley, Origins, pp. 18990, 200;
205. id., 'Planned field systems in eastern Yorkshire: some thoughts on their origins', AgHR 31 (1983), pp. 91-103.
206. Oosthuizen, 'New light?', pp. 182-3, 189-91.
207. Lewis, Mitchell-Fox and Dyer, Village, hamlet and farm, pp. 237-8.
208. Fox, 'Alleged transformation', pp.545, 548;
209. T. Eggertsson, 'Avoiding the open field syndrome and the perils of path dependency', Acta Sociologica 36 (1993).
210. M. Turner, J.V. Beckett and B. Afton, 'Agricultural sustainability and open-field farming in England, c.1650-1830', International J. Agric. Sustainability, 1 (2003), pp. 124-40;
211. De Moor, 'Avoiding tragedies', pp. 17-18.
212. Thus its history exemplifies Eggertsson's argument that institutions can create frictions and constraints which may eventually prevent the pursuit of rational economic goals, T. Eggertsson, Economic behaviour and institutions (1990), pp. 167-71, 231-45.
213. Wood, Purvis and Harrison, 'Irregular field systems', p. 175.