To all appearances many of the arrangements found in the course of, and to the close of, the Middle Ages, and even (in a decaying and disappearing form) almost to our own generation, were descended from that well-nigh immemorial antiquity, in which our forefathers were colonists in what was to them a new world--a world of forest and of fen, of man-eating beasts, and alien foemen as fierce or fiercer than they. These conditions determined the course of action of the men who lived under them. For safety, men of one blood dwelt together in a stockaded village or tún. They and their stock, however, had to subsist on their labour and the bounty of the earth; and therefore around the village a tract of cultivable land was appropriated to the use of the community. Until some degree of security was attained it was futile to dream too much of individual rights; the inhabitants would have been only too glad of the co-operation of their neighbours, and whilst some worked others no doubt stood to arms. Within this area seem to have lain fenced fields for the shelter of calves and other young animals, but this was probably the only exception. Beyond the arable land lay a ring of meadow land; beyond that the stinted pasture; and beyond that again the forest or waste.
By the term "common" is generally understood common of pasture; it is not unusual to meet with the phrase "cow commons," as though cows were the principal, if not the sole, objects which rendered commons of service. This may well have been the case in later times. In early days however, there went along with it common tillage, examples of which are still to be found on the Continent. Traces of the open-field system exist also in various parts of England, notably between Hitchin and Cambridge, where there are huge turf balks dividing the fields. It is said that within the last century the country lying between Royston and Newmarket was entirely unenclosed, and till quite late in the century parishes like Lexton, in Northamptonshire, retained this characteristic. Other examples occur at Swanage in Dorset and Stogursey in West Somerset.
Before proceeding to describe the methods of cultivation employed, it is desirable to glance at a custom which, there is reason to suppose, is connected with that remote period when the English were not _de jure_ masters of the soil, but occupied the position of colonists, who either expropriated the original inhabitants or entered upon possession of land as _res nullius_, to which they had established no solid claim by prescription. We have already referred to that valuable repertoire of national customs, so judiciously edited as to merit the higher praise _in_valuable--the Year-Books. The reports of the pleas in the Common Bench for 1293 include the following: