THE MANORIAL "WEB" 43
symmetrical and universal than it ever was in fact. But was it not
sufficiently similar over large stretches of time and space to make it the
most useful preliminary framework round which to gather the new.
material, if only care be taken at once to lay stress on the multiformity
of actual life?1
It is with this point of view in mind that this essay has been written.
Let us begin then with a single village and the lands sur-
rounding it, assuming for the sake of simplicity that it is all held
by one lord. Whatever shape the actual village took—a shape
determined by many factors2—in nearly every village the peasants
lived in small houses, placed side by side, each often having a
little enclosure or plot of ground behind it. Around the village
and stretching away lay the common fields—the arable land—
which in many ways formed the most notable characteristic of the
manorial organisation. The history of the origination of these
field-systems, again, is not our subject :3 our concern is with their
cultivation and the part they played in the life of the peasant.
Besides these common fields there were the meadows: almost as
vital to the community as the arable. Then, again, there were the
commons on which the villagers had grazing rights, and beyond
them stretched the "waste", and the woods and forests.
Such was the enclosing framework, "the web ", as Dr Coulton
calls it, " within which the medieval peasant lives and moves and
has his being"; and, he adds, "it is a very complicated tissue,
which we must take into account before we can understand his
daily life".4 It is indeed a "complicated tissue", and one not
easy to understand in all its details, but perhaps our best plan
will be to start from the church in the centre of the village and
so work out to the very edges of the manor. Imagine, then, a
little village, with its groups of houses, each of them with its
garden and here and there an enclosed stretch of meadow.
Beyond them stretches the open country, and at a closer view it
1 Econ. yourn., June 1926, reviewing The Medieval Village, by G. G.
Coulton.
3 For discussion of this, see Geographical Journal^ xxix, 45-52.
3 The best monograph is that of H. L. Gray, English Field Systems. This
investigates the geographical distribution of the two- and three-field system in
England, and attempts to explain the way in which special conditions, such as
those in Kent or East Anglia, are to be accounted for. His work must be
corrected, however, by such special studies as those of Stenton, Douglas, etc.
mentioned above.
* Med. Village, 37.