THE VILL IN AGRICULTURE
The one bond which holds the vill together is a system of communal agriculture. The machinery necessary was expensive, for the plough of eight oxen was often beyond the means of any individual villager, and so we find that the vill co-operated in the performance of a good many of the more difficult operations of farming. Besides this, after harvest the fields were thrown open and all the villagers turned their cattle into them, as well as on to the field which for that year was remaining fallow (for the general system was to have two or three fields one of which was left fallow each year).
From what has just been said it will be obvious that there were many features of the agricultural life of the vill which would need regulation, and in spite of Maitland’s doubts it seems now fairly clear that there was a moot in the vill which ordered its economic life, made bylaws and enforced their observance. It is tempting to regard the numerous “halimotes” of which we have evidence as being survivals of the earlier vill moot. To the eyes of some historians the co-operative element in the village community appears so strong that they describe it as an agrarian communism; but at this point we again touch upon a difficult and controversial subject upon which we can here say no more than that it is almost as difficult to prove a true agrarian communism as it is to find the modern notion of individual private property in land. There has been a great deal of conjecture as to the probable character of the primitive village community, and much of it has removed the question from the realm of history into that of speculative pre-history.1
Whatever its origin, the mediaeval village community was dissolved in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries as a result of the great enclosure movements promoted by landowners with two distinct objects—first, to abandon the old system of strips,2 re-survey the land and allot to each holder a compact area instead of his scattered strips, and also to enclose portions of the common land and restrict them to private use, generally of the lord of the manor.
THE VILL AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Besides this powerful economic bond which produced a unity from within, as time went on there came constant pressure from without which tended to the same result. Especially after the Conquest and down to the middle of the thirteenth century, the vill was being constantly used by the central authorities as the lowest unit of local government. As the Crown interfered more and more with local questions, so we find more and more reference in public documents to the vill, first one and then another duty being thrust upon it. The middle ages were fond of the very rough-and-ready, but effective, method of imposing a duty upon a group of people and holding them jointly and severally bound to perform it; any arrangement for apportioning the burden among the individual members of the group was their private concern, the Crown refusing to take any notice or to give any assistance to the process. At the close of the twelfth century the Crusades caused a good deal of taxation. The method by which it was assessed was simple; each county was assigned a quota proportionate to its estimated wealth (this estimate is the technical meaning of the word taxatio); the county then divided this quota in a similar manner among the hundreds and the vills, and so a vill would be responsible for raising a particular sum of money—no doubt by negotiation among its members, although often under the eye of royal taxers.
THE VILL AND CRIMINAL LAW
The vill is most remarkable, however, for its place in the system of police and criminal procedure.
“It ought to attend the court held by the Justices in Eyre. It ought to attend the sheriff’s turn. It ought to attend the hundred and county courts whenever it has any crime to present. It must come at the coroner’s call to make inquest when a dead man’s body is found. It is bound to see that all its members who ought to be in frankpledge are in frankpledge. In some parts of the country the township is itself a frankpledge, a tithing... and in this case it is responsible for the production of any of its members who is accused of crime. Apart from this, it was bound to arrest malefactors; at all events if a person was slain within its boundaries during the daytime and the slayer was not arrested, it was liable to an amercement.... Again, from of old it was the duty of the township to raise the hue and cry and follow the trail of stolen cattle.... Moreover, it was the common practice to commit prisoners to the charge of the villata, and then if the prisoners escaped the villata was amerced. So if a malefactor took sanctuary, the neighbouring townships had to watch the church and prevent his escape. Most of these liabilities can be traced back into the reign of Henry II.”1
The thirteenth-century statutes systematised the police powers of the vill; watchmen were to be kept throughout the night and the assize of arms enforced; in 1252 constables were to be appointed, and in 1253 vills were ordered to provide at their own cost the necessary weapons, while, as we have already said, the Statute of Winchester in 1285 consolidated these previous enactments for the rest of the middle ages. The vill was further under heavy obligations in the maintenance of roads and bridges and the cleansing and repairing of river-banks. From all this it will be clear that the vill could hardly escape being many times amerced, and it seems that the inhabitants were jointly and severally liable to find the money.
Finally, the vill had very important duties in the system of presentments. When a crime occurred within the vill it was the duty of the reeve and the four best men to report it to the hundred court and if possible to produce the guilty party, while on numerous occasions the King’s Justices would summon the vill where a crime was committed (together with four or more neighbouring vills, all appearing by their reeve and four best men) to pass upon the guilt or innocence of a prisoner accused of crime.
In the later middle ages the vill ceased to be of general legal importance. From the administrative point of view it was gradually replaced by the parish with which in fact it frequently coincided, and ever since Elizabeth’s poor law the parish has tended to become a unit of civil taxation.2 Rules of pleading, however, continued to insist upon places being assigned to a particular vill, and so the vill for centuries survived as a troublesome anachronism. To make matters worse, the boundaries of vills were uncertain, and a good many places were definitely not in any vill at all.1 At length it was enacted that the specification of the county should be enough.2
THE EARLY HUNDRED
The term “hundred” occurs in various parts of Europe as an administrative unit, and great controversy has arisen as to its ultimate origin. Tacitus tells us of Germans organised by groups of hundreds; five centuries later the Frankish kings legislated on the “hundred” as a criminal jurisdiction (595); and the English hundred appears nearly four centuries later still (between 946 and 961). Tempting as it is to see some connection between these phenomena, the hazardous nature of such a speculation is emphasised by modern historians. One recent theory3 would stress the efforts made in the tenth century to enforce order by means of voluntary associations, such as London had set up.4 The members undertook police duties, and the Crown gave them a share in the property of convicted criminals, and powers to find out informally whether suspects were guilty. From this gild it was a short step to the ordinance ascribed to Edgar on the holding of the hundred.5 The principal change was to substitute regular judicial procedure and trial by ordeal for the gild’s informal inquiry. While that theory takes note of the documents, as they have come down to us, it is difficult to resist the suggestion that the hundred must be a good deal older than the texts mentioned. Sometimes a connection can be traced between a hundred and the tax assessment of 100 hides, and it may be that our texts show not the origin, but the re-modelling of an already ancient institution.
King Edgar commanded that the hundred should meet every four weeks; thieves are to be pursued and judgment executed upon them; contempt of the hundred’s