"shots and furlongs of the village," as the fields were called, and had to wander about in all directions to look after his own. Such an arrangement would be the height of absurdity in any state of society where individual ownership prevails, and this point by itself would be sufficient to shew that what was meant was not a division of claims according to the simple rules of private ownership, so familiar to us, but a communal cultivation in which the arable was divided between the shareholders with as much proportionate fairness as possible. In keeping with this principle, the plan of cultivation, the reclaiming of land, the sequence of seasons for its use for wheat, barley, oats, peas, the time of its lying fallow, for setting up of hedges and their removal, the rules as to sending cattle on to the stubble, and the like, were worked out and put in practice, not by the industry of every single householder, but by the decision of the village as a whole. We may even discover traces of re-divisions, by which the shares of the householders were partitioned anew according to the standard of proportionate importance, though such instances are very exceptional and mostly connected with cases where some confusion had occurred to break up the proper relations of the holdings. If we look at the open-field system as a whole, we must insist upon the fact that the key to its arrangement lies in the principle of shareholding, every household being admitted to a certain proportion of rights according to its share in the community, and being held to corresponding duties.
The village community has, as a rule, a demesne farm superimposed on it, and the connexion between the two is very close and intimate. To begin with, the lord's demesne farm draws rents in money and in kind from the plots of the tenants, and it serves as a counting-house for the discharge of these rents. By the side of the counting-house stand barns and stores, where the multifarious proceeds of natural husbandry are gathered as they come in from the holdings. In some manors the dues are arranged to form a complete outfit for the consumption of the lord's household, a farm of one night, of a week, of a fortnight, as the case may he. The manors of the Abbey of Ramsey were bound to render as a fortnight's farm 12 quarters of flour, 2000 loaves of bread, 24 gallons of beer, 48 gallons of malt, 2 sesters of honey, 10 flitches of bacon, 10 rounds of cheese, 10 very best sucking pigs, 14 lambs, 14 geese, 120 chickens, 2000 eggs, 2 tubs of butter, 24 gallons of audit ale. In Lent the bacon and the cheese were struck off and money paid in their stead.
By the help of these accumulated stores, and of funds drawn from money rents and of small leases, the lord keeps a number of servants, and hires some labourers for the cultivation of the home farm, of the orchard and the arable set apart for it, as well as for looking after the buildings, the implements, etc. But the peculiar feature of the manorial arrangement consists in the fact that the demesne farm does not live independently of the village community adjoined to it, does not merely draw profits
