56 THE MANOR
suppose each man had enclosed his own strip of arable, so that
when the time came he could have put his own cattle to graze on
its stubble, and could have excluded those of other men. At once
great difficulties would have arisen: he could not have got his
plough or carts on to his own strips because of his fences and
those of others, nor could he have had room to turn his plough
or harrow without wasting much of his land. On the other hand,
in a field without any enclosures, to have kept one's own cattle
strictly to one narrow strip, and to have prevented them from
straying would have been almost beyond a man's power, and at
best would have led to all kinds of disputes. "Right of com-
mon", therefore, as it was called, was one of the most valued of
the peasant's rights, and allowed him to make use, not only of the
uncultivated pastures which were specially assigned to that use—
the " commons " of popular speech—and of the " wastes " which
stretched away on every side, but also of the open arable fields
and of the meadows as soon as they were cleared.
The value of the arable and the meadows to the peasant once
they were thrown open was considerable. We are apt to think of
the manorial flocks and herds as roaming only on the *' com-
mons " and the waste, but this is to disregard those lands more
centrally placed in the village, and open, at the least, for several
months of the year to all comers. The meadows, as we have seen,
were available throughout the autumn and part of the winter,
and must have afforded much welcome feeding for men's cattle.
The arable also was not neglected. If the two-field system was in
vogue there was always a considerable part of the arable available
for the herds, and even under the three-field system a good deal
of land was open for such purposes. And, although technically
it was "empty", there was much feeding to be obtained, first
from the stubble and afterwards from such small plants and
weeds as rapidly spring up on any uncultivated plot of land. The
" empty " lands were a considerable asset to the peasant through-
out the year, for always some part of the open fields was at his
disposal. In general, every one who had the right turned their
beasts loose, with those of their neighbours, to crop what they
could both here and in the meadows.
Closely connected with the manorial economy were the com-
mons and open spaces—"the wastes" as they were frequently