ASSARTS 51
handed to him or her".1 However doubtful we may feel of the
practice of communal agricultural operations, such minute
holdings as these force us to imagine some such method. Often *
the sharers were linked by marriage or other ties, so that the
difficulties were minimised, but the division of labour and of
proceeds inevitably led to friction and family feuds.
Besides his strips in the common fields the peasant had other
land. About his house he usually had a small "close" (i.e. an
enclosure) in which he grew such vegetables and fruits as were
possible at that time. We shall see more of this in later chapters,
and need do no more than to record it here. But, besides this
close, many peasants had still other plots of ground they culti-
vated as a private matter. These were usually on the outskirts of
the manor and were originally rough uncultivated waste, or land
often bordering on the forest edge. A small yearly rent gave
permission to break in a patch of some few acres of such virgin
soil, and many peasants eked out their scanty livelihood by such
a holding, technically called an " assart". For a family burdened
with more children than their shares in the common fields would
warrant such assart land was a godsend. Here they could utilise
their spare labour, and produce something to help fill the many
hungry mouths at home. Furthermore, the land was cultivated in
their own way. On the common fields, of necessity, the whole
community acted in common. The animals which had pastured
on the stubble throughout the winter were driven away upon a
certain day, which was agreed upon by the peasants, or deter-
mined by immemorial custom.2 Then there followed the plough-
ing, and the sowing of the crop for the year, and in all this there
was but little room for any individual choice. The peasant was
chained down to a routine that was, seemingly, unbreakable. On
his assarted land, however, he was his own master, and could
grow how and what he liked. Against this advantage we must
set certain drawbacks: his " assart" was frequently at the edge of
the manor, and was land not yet broken into cultivation, so that
it required constant hard work to reclaim it from the forest or
heath that was ever in wait to snatch it back again. Nor did
1 Hist. Teachers* Misc. i, i6sff.; Norf. Arch, xx, 179 ff. See also many
examples of subdivision in Univ. Lib. Camb. MSS. Kk. v. 29.
2 See Durham Halmote Rolls, 41*