Part 16 (1/2)
”_Gosefield_ (being obliged to accept the averment) said: 'Sir, they were never seised of common for more beasts than could be wintered and fed and supported on the growth of the said land.'”
There is appended to this report a note which lays down the law in a different sense from that before stated. It is as follows:
”It is not sufficient for anyone who avows distress to say that he avows the taking, &c., for that he found the beasts in his chace of such a place, or in the common of such a place, where he had no right of common; for it may be that neither party had a right of common; and thus it is not sufficient but he must say that he found them in his several pasture, or must say some other thing that touches himself and gives him a right to impound what he found. For no man can avow a distress in a common pasture save the lord of the soil of the common pasture. For if any of the commoners were to make avowry for beasts taken in the common pasture it would then follow that if the Inquest were to pa.s.s against the plaintiff, he who avowed the taking in the common pasture would have the return of the beasts and the amends, and not the lord of the pasture, and that would be improper. But this does not hold good where the King is the lord of the common pasture, and several persons holding of him in socage have common, because in that case anyone having common may avow a good distress. The reason is because the King will not be a party in such case or distrein anyone.”
In mediaeval country life, then, commons might be either manorial or forestal. Bishop Stubbs in his ”Const.i.tutional History” affirms that ”neither the hundreds of England nor the s.h.i.+res appear ever to have had common lands.” As regards hundreds, on the enclosure of a common, allotments were made to several towns.h.i.+ps of Knaresborough, and Stubbs himself allows that ”it seems a fair instance of common lands of a hundred.” Similarly, there is in the hundred of Coleness in Suffolk a pasture common to all the inhabitants. But in each instance we have probably to distinguish between use and owners.h.i.+p; and the same distinction applies to counties, otherwise the case of the Devons.h.i.+re Commons might seem to refute the dictum.
The Devons.h.i.+re Commons are not to be confused with the Forest of Dartmoor. They const.i.tute rather the purlieus, and, in general, afford better pasturage than the forest itself. Neither are they identical with the commons of the separate vills--the manorial or parochial commons. The whole of the inhabitants of the county may be regarded as possessing an interest in the Devons.h.i.+re Commons, with the exception of the people of Barnstaple and Totnes, the reason being that those districts not having been afforested with the rest of the county, the residents acquired no new privileges when Devons.h.i.+re was disafforested.
The other inhabitants retained whatever rights they had previously enjoyed not only in respect of the Devons.h.i.+re Commons, but of the Forest of Dartmoor, of which, at some early period--before the era of perambulations, in which they were not included--those commons had no doubt formed part. One effect of the wide extent of the right of common was that the rule of _levant and couchant_ did not obtain here.
Naturally, when all Devons.h.i.+re men were ent.i.tled to the use of the land, it was impossible to fix a limit to the number of the beasts that might be turned out throughout the length and breadth of the county.
Mention was made above of royal forests as occupying, in some respects, a different position from other lands in which a right of common was exercised. Dartmoor, although the property of the Prince of Wales as Duke of Cornwall, may be taken as, to all intents and purposes, answering to that description; and thus peculiar interest attaches to the usages which prevailed, and still prevail, within its bounds.
The question of ”Venville Rights on Dartmoor” is one that engaged the attention of a very capable writer as well as an accomplished antiquary, the late Mr. W. F. Collier; and although the subject has been handled by other investigators, it is from him that we have derived the bulk of our information on this very remarkable aspect of commonage. First, as to the name. ”Venville” is a provincial corruption of _fines villarum_, each vill paying a larger or smaller sum for the right of pasturage; and certain parishes or manors on the outskirts of the forest were said to be ”in venville.” ”The perambulation [of 1224],” says Mr. Birkett, ”establishes three important facts: viz., that the moor was originally part of a royal forest; that the Commons of Devon, and surrounding parishes were once part of the forest; and that the moor is not waste of a manor.” The towns.h.i.+ps were grouped into four bailiwicks--North, South, East, and West; and the fines payable compose too long a list to be given entire. The following, however, are specimens: The towns.h.i.+p of Trulegh (Throwleigh), 2_s._ 6_d._; the parish of South Tawton, 7_s._ 4 1/2_d._; the towns.h.i.+p of Sele (South Zeal), 6 1/2_d._; the hamlet of Lowyngton, in the parish of Meavy, 2_d._; the towns.h.i.+p of Gadamewe (G.o.dameavy), in the same parish, 2_d._; the towns.h.i.+p of Chagford, 12_d._; the hamlet of Teigncombeham, with [within?] the parish of Chagford, 4_s._ This was in 1506-7. In return for these payments the commoners have certain ”venville” rights, which extend over the forest proper and the Devons.h.i.+re Commons, and include the taking of stone and sand for their own use. But the most valued is that of agistment or pasturage, especially of ponies. The Duchy, on its part, claims and exercises the right of ”drift”--a picturesque survival on which we may well bestow some regard.
The division of the forest into four quarters still continues, each being in charge of a moorman; and over these wide tracts and the adjacent Commons sheep, bullocks, and ponies are turned out by the tenants to graze at will. In the autumn the animals are driven to a traditional spot, in order that they may be claimed by their owners.
There is a bullock drift, and a pony drift, of which the former is the earlier; and each quarter has its own drift days, which are usually different. In any case, no notice is given, but about two o'clock in the morning the moorman is apprised by a messenger that he must ”drive” his quarter for bullocks or ponies. Thereupon, according to the regular procedure, he ascends the tors and blows his horn as an intimation to the tenants to a.s.sist in the drift. In the western quarter there was formerly a stone, through a hole in which it was the custom to blow the horn, but this stone now graces a wall in a hedge.
The drift to Merrivale Bridge is accomplished by men on horseback and men on foot, and dogs, to the accompaniment of horns and halloos; and when all the animals have been gathered, an official of the Duchy takes his stand on an ancient stone and reads a proclamation, which done the owners are summoned to claim, let us say, their ponies. The venville tenants identify their beasts, making no payment; but other persons--and in no case, apparently, is the right of pasturage disputed, nearly the whole of Devons.h.i.+re having been forest--have to render a fine for each animal. They have also to meet a trivial charge for night rest, which is supposed to have arisen from an old custom that debarred anyone from remaining on the forest by night, with the consequent temptation to deer-poaching. An unclaimed animal is driven to Dunnebridge Pound and there kept for some weeks, at the expiration of which, if he is still unclaimed, or if the owner refuses to pay for poundage, etc., he is sold for the benefit of the Duchy.
Each quarter of the moor has its peculiar earmark for ponies, consisting of a round hole at the base or the tip on the near or off ear, through which a piece of string is tied, there being thus four distinct marks.
Some of these ancient usages have fallen into desuetude. The last occasion on which the horn was sounded was in 1843; and the four quarters are now let to as many ”moormen,” who endeavour to make as much profit as possible out of them. To this day, however, neither on Dartmoor nor on the Devons.h.i.+re Commons, is any man denied pasturage for his ponies or cattle.
BONDMEN
From vills we may naturally turn to those who in ancient days--the word has another meaning now--were named after them _villeins_. More than once in the course of this work we have had occasion to refer to the existence of an unfree cla.s.s in England, on which prouder and more happily circ.u.mstanced persons looked with considerable disdain, and therefore our account would fail of a necessary element of completeness if it omitted to deal, in some measure, with this striking phenomenon of mediaeval English life. The subject is too wide and complex to be discussed with any approach to thoroughness, but some aspects of it may be introduced, and indeed _must be_ introduced, being, as we have said, complementary to statements of social relations.h.i.+ps already set down.
The position of those who rested under the stigma of servitude is brought home to us pretty forcibly by a report of proceedings in the Middles.e.x Iter of 1294:
”One A. brought a writ of imprisonment against B.
”_Heilham_ (for B.): 'He ought not to be answered, for he is our villein.'
”_A._: 'A free man and of free condition, ready, etc.'
”_Heilham_ said as before.
”_Metingham_ [the judge]: 'He cannot give a higher answer in a writ of Neifty.'
”_Heilham_: 'We will tell you the truth; his father was our villein, and held of us in villeinage land in the vill mentioned in his count, and where he was taken; and he begot this A., and also one B., his brother, of whom we are now seised, as of our villein; and this A. went out of the limits of the villeinage, and afterwards returned, and we found him at his hearth in his own nest, and we took him as our villein, as every lord may well do; and we pray judgment.'
”_Metingham_: 'If my villein beget a child on my land which is in villeinage, and the child so begotten go out of the limits of my land, and six or seven or more years after return to the same land, and I find him in his own nest and at his own hearth, I can take him and tax him as my villein for the reason that his return brings him to the same condition as he was when he went.'
”_Heilham_: 'He fell into the pit which he hath digged.'”
We must beware of attributing this doctrine of Neifty to the Norman Conquest, which merely supplied names; in definiteness and cruelty nothing could exceed the practice of serf.a.ge under the Saxons. ”The slave,” says Green, ”became part of the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the a.s.s, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint.
'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb.” In the same pa.s.sage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes--war, crime, debt, and poverty all a.s.sisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual bondage.[16] Degradation of freemen into serfs remained a disagreeable possibility as long as the system endured.