[p412]CHAPTER XI.RESULT OF THE EVIDENCE.I. THE METHOD OF THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS.It may perhaps now be possible to sum up the evidence, without pretending to more certainty in the conclusion than the condition of the question warrants.
[p412]
It may perhaps now be possible to sum up the evidence, without pretending to more certainty in the conclusion than the condition of the question warrants.
The tribal system in Wales and Germany.
At the two extreme limits of our subject we have found, on one side, the tribal system of Wales and Ireland, and, on the other side, the German tribal system.
In the earliest stage of these systems they were seemingly alike, both in the nomadic habits of the tribes, and the shifting about of the households in a tribe from one homestead to another. Sir John Davis describes this shifting as going on in Ireland in his day, and Cæsar describes it as going on in Germany 1,700 years earlier.
Co-aration of the waste on the early open-field system.
In both cases, such agriculture as was a necessity even to pastoral tribes was carried on under the open-field system in its simplest form—the ploughing up of new ground each season, which then went back into grass. The Welsh triads speak of it as a[p413]co-arationof portions ofthe waste. Tacitus describes it in the words, 'Arva per annos mutant, et superest ager.' In neither case, therefore, is therethe three-field system, which implies fixed arable fields ploughed again and again in rotation.
The three-field system implies fixed settlements and rotation of crops, which came probably with Roman rule. The yard-land or hub implies servile tenants.
The three-field system evidently implies the surrender of the tribal shifting and the submission to fixed settlement. Further, as wherever we can examine the three-field system we find the mass of the holdings to have been fixed bundles, calledyard-landsorhuben—bundles retaining the same contents from generation to generation—it seems to follow either that the tribal division of holdings among heirs, which was the mark of free holdings, had ceased,orthat the three-field system was from the first the shell of a community in serfdom.
The geographical distribution of the three-field system—mainly within the old Roman provinces and in the Suevic districts along their borders—makes it almost certain that, in Germany,Roman rulewas the influence which enforced the settlement, and introduced, with other improvements in agriculture, such as the vine culture, a fixed rotation of crops.
In Wales the necessity for settlement didnotgenerally produce the three-field systemwith holdings in yard-lands,630because, as the Welsh tribesmen, though they may have had household slaves, as a rule held no taeogs or prædial slaves, it produced no serfdom. But under the German tribal system, even in the time of Tacitus, the tribesmen in the[p414]semi-Romanised districts, at all events, already had prædial slaves.
The Roman villa another factor and grew into the manor.
The manorial system, however, was not simply a development from the tribal system of the Germans; it had evidently a complex origin. A Roman element also seems to have entered into its composition.
The Romanvilla, to begin with, a slave-worked estate, during the later empire, whether from German influence or not, became still more like a manor by the addition ofcoloniand other mostly barbarian semi-servile tenants to the slaves.
There may have been once free village communities on the 'ager publicus,' but, as we have seen, the management of the public lands under the fiscal officers of the Emperor also tended during the later Empire to become more and more manorial in its character, so much so that the word 'villa' could apparently sometimes be applied to the fiscal district.
Roman and German elements combined.
Whichever of the two factors—Roman or German—contributed most to the mediæval manor, the manorial estate became the predominant form of land ownership in what had once been Roman provinces. And the German successors of Roman lords of villas became in their turn manorial lords of manors; whilst the 'coloni,' 'liti,' and 'tributarii' upon them, wherever they remained upon the same ground, apparently became, with scarcely a visible change, a community of serfs.
Both 'ager publicus' and 'terra regis' manorial.
On the other hand, the fact that theterra regisalso was divided under Saxon and Frankish kings intomanorsprobably was the natural result of the growing manorial management of the public lands under the fiscal officers of the Emperor during the later Empire,[p415]quickened or completed after the barbarian conquests. The fiscal districts seem to have become in fact royal manors, and the free 'coloni,' 'liti,' and 'servi' upon them appear as manorial tenants of different grades in the earliest grants to the monasteries.
The fact that as early as the time of Tacitus, the German chieftains and tribesmen were in their own country lords of serfs, in itself explains the ease with which they assumed the position of lords of manors on the conquest of the provinces.
The result of conquest seems thus to have been chiefly a change of lordship, both as regards the private villas and the public lands. The conquered districts seem to have become in a wholesale way practicallyterra regis. There is no evidence that the modes of agriculture on the one hand or the modes of management on the other hand were materially changed. The conquering king would probably at once put followers of his own into the place of the Roman fiscal officers. These would becomequasi-lords of the royal manors on theterra regis. Then by degrees would naturally arise the process whereby under lavish royal grants manors were handed one after another into the private ownership of churches and monasteries and favourites of the king, thus honey-combing theterra regiswith private manors.
This seems to have been what happened in the Frankish provinces, and in the Alamannic and Bavarian districts, where the process can be most clearly traced. And the result seems to have been the almost universal prevalence of the manorial system in these districts. Even the towns came to be regarded as in the demesne of the king. And[p416]gradually manorial lordship extended itself over the free tenants as well as over the various semi-servile classes who were afterwards confused together in the general class of serfs.
The community of serfs was fed from above and from below. Free 'coloni,' by their own voluntary surrender, and free tribesmen, perhaps upon conquest or gradually by the force of long usage, sank into serfs. Slaves, on the other hand, by their lord's favour, or to meet the needs of agriculture, were supplied with an outfit of oxen and rose out of slavery into serfdom.
But what was this serfdom? It was not simply the old prædial slavery of the Germans of Tacitus. Nor was it merely a continuance of the slavery on the Roman villa.
Slavery mitigated by Christian humanity.
For finally, in the period of transition from Roman to German lordship, a new moral force entered as a fresh factor in the economic evolution. The silent humanising influence of Christianity seems to have been the power which mitigated the rigour of slavery, and raised the slave on the estates of the Church into the middle status of serfdom, by insisting upon the limitation of his labour to the three days' week-work of the mediæval serf.
Thus, from the point of view alike of the German and the Roman 'servi,' mediæval serfdom, except to the freemen who by their own surrender or by conquest were degraded into it, was a distinct step upward in the economic progress of the masses of the people towards freedom.
The pre-Romanone-fieldsystem in England.
Applying these results especially to England, we[p417]have once more to remember that there was settled agriculture in Belgic Britain before the Roman invasion: that the fact vouched for by Pliny, thatmarlandmanurewere ploughed into the fields, is proof that the simplest form of the open-field system—the Welsh co-aration of the waste, and the German shifting every year of the 'arva'—had already given place to a more settled and organised system, in which the same land remained under tillage year after year. Pliny's description of the marling of the land, however, points rather to theone-field systemof Northern Germany than to the three-field system, as that under which the corn was grown which Cæsar found ripening on British fields when he first landed on the southern coast.631
Roman introduction of the three-course rotation of crops.
In the meantime Roman improvements in agriculture may well have included the introduction into the province of Britain of the three-course rotation of crops. The open fields round the villa of the Roman lord, cultivated by his slaves, 'coloni,' 'tributarii,' and 'liti,' may have been first arranged on the three-field system; and, once established, that system would spread and become general during those centuries of Roman occupation in which so much corn was produced and exported from the island.
The Romanannonæ—founded, perhaps, on the earlier tribal food-rents—were, in Britain, as we know from the 'Agricola' of Tacitus, taken mostly in corn;[p418]and thetributumwas probably assessed during the later empire on that system ofjugationwhich was found to be so like to thehidationwhich prevailed after the Saxon conquest.
Conquest the rule. The invaders become lords ofhamsmanors.
Putting aside as exceptional the probably peaceful but at best obscure settlements in tribal households, and regarding conquest as the rule, the economic evidence seems to supply no solid reason for supposing that the German conquerors acted in Britain in a way widely different from that which they followed on the conquest of Continental Roman provinces. The conquered territory here as elsewhere probably became at firstterra regisof the English, Saxon, or Jutish kings. And though there may have been more cases in England than elsewhere of extermination of the old inhabitants, the evidence of the English open-field system seems to show that, taking England as a whole, the continuity between the Roman and English system of land management was not really broken. The Roman provincialvillastill seems to have remained the typical form of estate; and the management of the public lands, nowterra regis, seems to have preserved its manorial character. For whenever estates are granted to the Church or monasteries, or to thanes of the king, they seem to be handed over as already existing manors, with their own customs and services fixed by immemorial usage.
It is most probable that whenever German conquerors descended upon an already peopled country where agriculture was carried on as it was in Britain, their comparatively small numbers, and still further their own dislike to agricultural pursuits and liking for lordship, and familiarity with servile tenants in[p419]the old country, would induce them to place the conquered people in the position of serfs, as the Germans of Tacitus seem to have done, making them do the agriculture by customary methods. If in any special cases the numbers in the invading hosts were larger than usual, they would probably include the semi-servile dependants of the chieftains and tribesmen. These, placed on the land allotted to their lords, would be serfs in England as they had been at home.
The yard-land shows this,
At this point, as we have seen, the internal evidence of the open-field system, at the earliest date at which it arises, comes to our aid, showing that as a general rule it was the shell, not of household communities of tribesmen doing their own ploughing like the Welsh tribesmen by co-aration, but of serfs doing the ploughing under an over-lordship.
Here the English evidence points in precisely the same direction as the Continental. For, as so often repeated, the prevalence, as far back as the earliest records, of yard-lands andhuben, handed down so generally, and evidently by long immemorial custom, asindivisible bundlesfrom one generation to another, implies theabsenceofdivision among heirs, and is accordingly a mark of the servile nature of the holding.
and also local names.
The earlier 'hams' and 'tuns' manors.
Further, whenever a place was called, as so many places were, by the name of a single person, it seems obvious that at the moment when its name was acquired it was under aland ownership, which, as regards the dependent population upon it, was alordship. We have seen that in the laws of King Ethelbert the 'hams' and 'tuns' of England are spoken of as in a single ownership, whilst the[p420]mention of the three grades of 'læts' shows that there were semi-servile tenants upon them. And in the vast number of instances in which local names consist of a personal name with a suffix, the evidence of the local name itself is strong for the manorial character of the estate. When that suffix istun, orham, orvilla, with the personal name prefixed, the evidence is doubly strong. Even when connected with an impersonal prefix, these suffixes in themselves distinctly point, as we have seen, to the manorial character of the estate, with at least direct, if not absolutely conclusive, force.
Whatever doubt remains is not as to the generally manorial character of thehamsandtunsof the earliest Saxon records, or as to the serfdom of their tenants; as to this, it is submitted that the evidence is clear and conclusive. Whatever doubt remains is as to which of two possible courses leading to this result was taken by the Saxon conquerors of Britain.
As regards the methods of their conquest, there happens to exist no satisfactory contemporary evidence. They may either have conquered and adopted the Roman villas, whether in private or imperial hands, with the slaves and 'coloni' or 'tributarii' upon them, calling them 'hams,' or they may have destroyed the Roman villas and their tenants, and have established in their place fresh 'hams' of their own, which in mediæval Latin records, whether in private or royal possession, were also afterwards called 'villas.' In some districts they may have followed the one course, in other districts the other course. Either of the two might as well as the other have produced manors and manorial serfdom.[p421]
Survivals from the Romano-German province prove continuity, and are inconsistent with extermination
But when the internal evidence of the Anglo-Saxon land system is examined, even this doubt as to which of the two methods was generally followed is in part removed. For it may at least be said with truth that the hundred years of historical darkness during which there is a simple absence of direct testimony, is at least bridged over by such planks ofindirect economic evidence as the apparent connexion between the Roman 'jugation' and the Saxon 'hidage,' the resemblance between the Roman and Saxon allotment of a certain number of acres along with single or double yokes of oxen to the holdings, the prevalence of the rule of single succession, the apparent continuance of the Romantributumandannonæ, and even some of thesordida munerain the Saxongafol,gafol-yrth,averagium, and other manorial services; and, lastly, the fact that in Gaul and Upper Germany the actual continuity between the Romanvillaand the Germanheimcan be more or less clearly traced.
unless the invaders were themselves Romanised.
The force of this economic evidence, it is submitted, is at least enough to prove either that there was a sufficient amount of continuity between the Roman villa and the Saxon manor to preserve the general type, or that the German invaders who destroyed and re-introduced the manorial type of estate came from a district in which there had been such continuity, and where they themselves had lived long enough to permit the peculiar manorial instincts of the Romano-German province to become a kind of second nature to them.
It is as impossible to conceive that this complex manorial land system, which we have found to bristle with historical survivals of usages of the[p422]Romano-German province, should have been suddenly introduced into England byun-RomanisedNorthern piratical tribes of Germans, as it is to conceive of the sudden creation of a fossil.
The most reasonable hypothesis, in the absence of direct evidence, appears therefore to be that the manorial system grew up in Britain as it grew up in Gaul and Germany, as the compound product of barbarian and Roman institutions mixing together during the periods first of Roman provincial rule, and secondly of German conquest.
The large extent of folk-land evidence against extensive allodial allotments.
This hypothesis seems at least most fully to account for the facts. Perhaps, it is not too much to say that whilst the large tracts of England remaining folk-land orterra regis, in spite of the lavish grants to monasteries complained of by Bede, are in themselves suggestive of the comparatively limited extent of allodial allotments among the conquering tribesmen, the existence and multiplication upon theterra regis, not of free village communities, but of royal manors of the same type as that of the Frankish villas, with a serfdom upon them also of the same type, and connected with the same three-field system of husbandry in both cases, almost amounts to a positive verification when the historical survivals clinging to the system in both cases are taken into account.
The invaders either adopted the natives as serfs or brought serfs with them.
Even on the supposition that the Saxons really exterminated the old population and destroyed every vestige of the Roman system, it has already become obvious that it would not at all follow that they generally introduced free village communities; for in that case the evidence would go far to show that they most likely brought slaves with them and settled[p423]them in servile village communities round their own dwellings, as Tacitus saw the Germans of his time doing in Germany. But, again, it must be remembered that however naturally this might produce the manor and serfdom, still the survivals of minute provincial usages hanging about the Saxon land system would remain unaccounted for, unless the invaders of the fifth century had already been thoroughly Romanised before their conquest of Britain.
English history begins not with free communities but with serfdom.
We cannot, indeed, pretend to have discovered in the economic evidence a firm bridge for all purposes across the historic gulf of the fifth century, and to have settled the difficult questions who were the German invaders of England, whence they came, and what was the exact form of their settlements in one district or another. But the facts we have examined seem to have settled the practical economic question with which we started, viz. whether thehamsandtunsof England, with their open fields and yard-lands, in the earliest historical times were inhabited and tilled in the main by free village communities, or by communities in villenage. However many exceptional instances there may have been of settlements in tribal households, or even free village communities, it seems to be almost certain that these 'hams' and 'tuns' were, generally speaking, and for the most part from the first, practicallymanorswith communities inserfdomupon them.
The yard-land not the allodial allotment of a free tribesman.
It has become at least clear, speaking broadly, that the equal 'yard-lands' of the 'geburs' were not the 'alods' or free lots of 'alodial' freeholders in a common 'mark,' but the tenements of serfs paying 'gafol' and doing 'week-work' for their lords. And this is[p424]equally true whether the manors on which they lived were bocland of Saxon thanes, or folk-land under the 'villicus' of a Saxon king.
There yet remains one test to which the hypothesis of continuity between the British, Roman, and English village community and open-field system may be put.
Doubts as to the extermination of the British population by the English invaders.
It has sometimes been inferred, perhaps too readily, that the English invaders of Roman Britain nearly exterminated the old inhabitants, destroying the towns and villages, and making fresh settlements of their own, upon freshly chosen sites. If this were so, it would, of course, involve the destruction of the open fields round the old villages, and the formation of fresh open fields round the new ones.
The passage in Ammianus Marcellinus has sometimes been quoted, in which he describes the Alamanni, who had taken possession of Strasburg, Spires, Worms, Mayence, &c., as encamped outside these cities, shunning their inside 'as though they had been graves surrounded by nets.'632But this was in time of war, and no proof of what they might do when in peaceable possession of the country.
Mr. Freeman also has drawn a graphic picture of Anderida, with the two Saxon villages of Pevensey and West Ham outside of its old Roman walls, and no dwellings within them. But it would so obviously be[p425]much easier to build new houses outside the gates of a ruined city, or, perhaps, we should say rather fortified camp, than to clear away the rubbish and build upon the old site, that such an instance is far from conclusive. Nor does the fact that in so many cases the streets of once Roman cities deviate from the old Roman lines prove that the new builders avoided the ancient sites. It proves only that, instead of removing the heaps of rubbish, they chose the open spaces behind them as more convenient for their new buildings, in the process of erecting which the heaps of rubbish were doubtless gradually removed.
Is there evidence of continuity in the rural villages?
But, in truth, cases of fortified cities are not to the point. What we want to find out is whether, in theruraldistricts, the British villages, with their open fields around them, were generally adopted by the Romans, and whether, having survived the Roman occupation, the Saxons adopted them in their turn.
e.g.in the Hitchin district.
It may be worth while to recur to the district from which was taken the typical example of the open fields, testing the point by such local evidence as may there be found.
The Icknild way and other ancient roads.
Among the ancient boundaries of the township of Hitchin, or rather of that part which included the now enclosed hamlet of Walsworth, was mentioned the Icknild way—that old British road which, passing from Wiltshire to Norfolk, here traverses the edge of the Chiltern hills. It sometimes winds lazily about uphill and down, following the line of the chalk downs. In many places it is merely a broad turf drift way. Here and there a long straight stretch of a mile or two suggests a Roman improvement upon[p426]its perhaps once more devious course. Here and there, too, are fragments of similar broad turf lanes leading nowhere, having lost the continuity which no doubt they once possessed. Sometimes crossing it, sometimes branching off from it, sometimes running parallel to it, are also frequently found similar winding broad turf drift ways, or straight roads of apparently British or Roman origin. It crosses Akeman Street at Tring, Watling Street at Dunstable, and Irmine Street at Royston. Neither Dunstable nor Royston, however, are examples of continuity, being comparatively modern towns, neither of them mentioned in the Domesday Survey. Hitchin lies about half-way between the cross-roads.
The district under its Belgic kings.
The district included in the annexed map, of which Hitchin is the centre, was a part of Belgic Britain. According to Cæsar this had been under the rule of the same king as Belgic Gaul, and upon the evidence of coins and certain passages in Roman writers, it is pretty well understood to have been, soon after the invasion of Cæsar, under the rule of Tasciovanus,633whose capital was Verulamium, and after him of his son Cunobeline, whose capital was Camulodunum. The sons of the latter (one of them Caractacus) were prevented from succeeding him by the advance of the Roman arms.634The intimate relations of the two capitals at Verulam and at Colchester explain the existence of the roads between them.
Maps of the Neighbourhood of Hitchin, The Hills at Meppershall, Litlington, and Toot Hill at Pirton.SeeLarger.Go to:List of Illustrations
Maps of the Neighbourhood of Hitchin, The Hills at Meppershall, Litlington, and Toot Hill at Pirton.
SeeLarger.Go to:List of Illustrations
The dykes which cross the Icknild way at[p427]intervals, East of Royston—the Brent dyke, the Balsham dyke (parallel to theVia Devana), and the Devil's dyke, near Newmarket—seem to indicate that here was the border land between this district and that of the Iceni (Norfolk and Suffolk).
Coins of Tasciovanus and Cunobeline.
Sandy (the RomanSalinæ), at the north of the district in the map, is known, from the evidence of coins of Cunobeline, to have been an important British centre. A gold coin of Tasciovanus, and other British coins, have been picked up on the Icknild way, between Hitchin and Dunstable. A gold coin of Cunobeline, and many fragments of Roman pottery, have been found about half a mile to the east of Abington, a village a little to the north of the Icknild way, near Royston.635Coins of Cunobeline have also been found at Great Chesterford. A copper coin of Cunobeline was picked up in a garden in Walsworth, a hamlet of Hitchin, and British urns of a rude type have been recently found on the top of Benslow Hill, the high ground on the east of the town.
Pre-Roman roads, &c.
The map will show in how many directions the district is cut up by Roman roads, which, as they evidently connect the various parts of the domain of the before-mentioned British kings, were probably, with the Icknild way itself, British tracks before they were adopted by the Romans.
Almost every commanding bluff of the chalk downs retains traces of its having been used as a hill fort, probably in pre-Roman times, as well as later, while the numerous tumuli all along the route of the Icknild way testify, probably, to the numerous battles fought in its neighbourhood.[p428]
Its Roman conquest under Claudius and Aulus Plautius, aboutA.D.43.
Probably this district fell under direct Roman rule after the campaigns of Aulus Plautius and Claudius, aboutA.D.43.636The direction of the advance was probably across the Thames at Wallingford, and along the Icknild way, from which the descent upon Verulam could well be made from Tring or Dunstable down what were afterwards called Akeman Street and Watling Street. Under the tumulus near Litlington, called Limloe, or Limbury Hill, skeletons were found, and coins of the reign of Claudius, and of later date. It is possible that the battle was fought here in a later reign which brought the further parts of the district under Roman rule.
The Saxon conquest aboutA.D.571.
The date of the Saxon conquest of this district may be as definitely determined. It preceded the conquest of Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester by a very few years. It may be pretty clearly placed at aboutA.D.571, when, according to the Saxon Chronicle, 'Cuthwulf fought with the Brit-weals at Bedcan-ford (Bedford), and took four towns. He took Lygean-birg (Lenborough) and Aegeles-birg (Aylesbury), and Bænesingtun (Bensington) and Egonesham (Eynsham).' This was the time when Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire fell into the hands of the West Saxons.
The old boundary of the ecclesiastical division of the country before the time of the Norman conquest included this district, with Bedford, in the diocese of Dorchester. The boundary probably followed the lines of the old West Saxon kingdom, and shut it off[p429]from Essex and the rest of Hertfordshire, which were included in the diocese of London.
The district, therefore, seems to have remained nearly 400 years under Roman rule, and under the British post-Roman rule another 100 years, till within twenty-five or thirty years of the arrival of St. Augustine in England, and the date of the laws of King Ethelbert, and within little more than 100 years of the date of the laws of King Ine, which laws presumably were founded upon customs of this district, once a part of the West Saxon kingdom.
Do the Roman remains suggest continuity?
The question is whether the position of the Roman remains which have been discovered in this neighbourhood points to a continuity in the sites of the present villages between British, Roman, and Saxon times. This question may certainly, in many instances, and, perhaps, generally, be answered distinctly in the affirmative.
The town of Hitchin, or 'Hiz,'i.e.'of the streams.'
Take first the town of Hitchin itself. Its name in the Domesday Survey was 'Hiz,' and there can be little doubt that it is a Celtic word, meaning 'streams.'637The position of the township accords with this name. The river 'Hiz' rises out of the chalk at Wellhead, almost immediately turns a mill, and, flowing through the town, joins the Ivel a few miles lower down in its course, and so flows ultimately into the Ouse. The Orton638rises at the west extremity of the township, in[p430]a few hundred yards turns West Mill, and forms the boundary of the parish till it meets the Hiz at Ickleford, where the two are forded by the Icknild way. The Purwell, rising from the south east, forms the boundary between the parishes of Hitchin and Much Wymondley, and then, after turning Purwell Mill, and dividing Hitchin from Walsworth Hamlet, also joins the Hiz before it reaches Ickleford. Thus two of these three pure chalk streams embrace the township, and one passes through it giving its Celtic name Hiz to the town.639
Its Celtic name.
It is not likely that either the Romans or the Saxon invaders gave it this Celtic name.
British and Roman remains.
As already mentioned, on the top of the hill, to the east of the town, British sepulchral urns have been recently found.
A Roman cemetery, with a large number of sepulchral urns, dishes, and bottles, and coins of Severus, Carausius, Constantine, and Alectus, was turned up a few years ago on the top of the hill on the opposite side of the town, in a part of the open fields called 'The Fox-holes'640—a plot of useless ground being often used for burials by the Romans.
Another Roman cemetery, with very similar pottery and coins, has been found on Bury Mead, near the line where the arable part ceases and the[p431]Lammas meadow lands begin. Bury field itself (i.e.the arable) has been deeply drained, but yielded no coins or urns.
Occasional coins and urns have been found in the town itself.
This, so far as it goes, is good evidence that Hitchin was a British and a Roman before it was a Saxon town.
In the sub-hamlet of Charlton, near Wellhead, the source of the Hiz, small coins of the lower Empire have been found. As already mentioned, a coin of Cunobeline was found in the village of Walsworth. In even the hamlets, therefore, there is some evidence of continuity. At Ickleford, where the Icknild way crosses the Hiz, Roman coins have been found.
Much Wymondley.
The next parish to the east, divided from Hitchin by the Purwell stream, is Much Wymondley.
The evidence of continuity, as regards this parish, is remarkably clear. The accompanying map641supplies an interesting example of open fields, with their strips and balks and scattered ownership still remaining in 1803. These open arable fields were originally divided off from the village by a stretch of Lammas land.
Roman holding perhaps of a retired veteran.
Between this Lammas land and the church in the village lie the remains of the little Roman holding, of which an enlarged plan is given. It consists now of several fields, forming a rough square, with its sides to the four points of the compass, and contains, filling in the corners of the square, about 25 Roman[p432]jugera—or the eighth of a centuria of 200 jugera—the extent of land often allotted, as we have seen, to a retired veteran with a single pair of oxen. The proof that it was a Roman holding is as follows:—In the corner next to the church are two square fields still distinctly surrounded by a moat, nearly parallel to which, on the east side, was found a line of black earth full of broken Roman pottery and tiles. Near the church, at the south-west corner of the property, is a double tumulus, which, being close to the church field, may have been an ancient 'toot hill,' or a terminal mound. In the extreme opposite corner of the holding was found a Roman cemetery, containing the urns, dishes, and bottles of a score or two of burials. Drawings of those of the vessels not broken in the digging, engraved from a photograph, are appended to the map, by the kind permission of the owner.642Over the hedge, at this corner, begins the Lammas land.643
How many other holdings were included in the Roman village we do not know, but that the village was in the same position in relation to the open fields that it was in 1803 is obvious.
Ashwell.
Ashwell also evidently stands on its old site round the head of a remarkably strong chalk spring, the clear stream from which flows through the village as the riverRhee, a branch of theCam. Early Roman coins and sepulchral urns have been found in the hamlet called 'Ashwell End,' and a Roman road, called 'Ashwell Street,' passes by the town parallel[p433]to the Icknild way. Near to the town is a camp, with a clearly defined vallum, called Harborough Banks, where coins of the later Empire have been found. A map of the parish, made before the enclosure, and preserved in the place, shows that it presented a remarkably good example of the open-field system.
Plan of the Parish of Much Wymondley.Enlarged Plan of the Roman Holding.SeeLarger.Go to:List of Illustrations
Plan of the Parish of Much Wymondley.Enlarged Plan of the Roman Holding.
SeeLarger.Go to:List of Illustrations
Roman villa and cemetery.
An instance of continuity as remarkable as that of Much Wymondley occurs at Litlington,644the next village to Ashwell, on the Ashwell Street. The church and manor house in this case lie near together on the west side of the village, and in the adjoining field and gardens the walls and pavements of a Roman villa were found many years ago. At a little distance from it, nearer to the Ashwell Street, a Romanustrinumand cemetery were found, surrounded by four walls, and yielding coins of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Quintillus, Carausius, Constantine the Great, Magnentius, &c. A map of this village is appended.
When the Roman villa was discovered, the open fields around the village were still unenclosed, and the position of Ashwell Street was pushed farther from the village at the time of the enclosure.
The tumulus called 'Limloe,' or 'Limbury Hill,' lies at the side of the road leading from the Icknild way across the Ashwell Street to the village, and immediately under it skeletons with coins of Claudius, Vespasian, and Faustina were found, as already mentioned.
Ickleton and Chesterford.
A few miles further east than Royston are two villages, Ickleton on the Icknild way, and Great[p434]Chesterford a little to the south of it. That both these places are on Roman sites the foundations and coins which have been found attest.645There are remains of a camp at Chesterford, and coins of Cunobeline as well as numerous Roman coins have been dug up there.646
Hadstock.
At Hadstock, a village near, in a field called 'Sunken Church Field,' Roman foundations and coins have been found.647
Other instances of continuity in the sites of villages.
Proceeding further east the list of similar cases might be greatly increased. But keeping within the small district, in the following other cases the finding of Roman coins in the villages seems to be fair proof of continuity in their sites, viz.:—Sandy, Campton, Baldock, Willian, Cumberlow Green, Weston, Stevenage, Hexton, and Higham Gobion.
Ancient mounds and earth works.
Two remarkable instances of ancient mounds or fortifications close to churches occur at Meppershall and Pirton, of both of which plans are given. The Pirton mound is called in the village the 'toot hill.' These mounds in the neighbourhood of churches may be much older than the Saxon conquest. Open air courts were by no means confined to one race.648Roman remains have been found in the neighbourhood of both these places, but how near to the actual village sites I am unable to say.649
Leaving out these two and many more doubtful cases, and without pretending to be exhaustive, there have been mentioned nearly a score in which Roman[p435]remains or coins have already been found on the present sites of villages in this small district.
Roman Pottery Found at Great Wymondley, Herts. March 1882.SeeLarger.Go to:List of Illustrations
Roman Pottery Found at Great Wymondley, Herts. March 1882.
SeeLarger.Go to:List of Illustrations
Strong evidence of continuity in this district.
So far the local evidence supports the view that the West Saxons, who probably conquered it aboutA.D.570, succeeded to a long-settled agriculture; and further it seems likely that, assuming the lordship vacated by the owners of the villas, and adopting the village sites, they continued the cultivation of the open fields around them by means of the old rural population on that same three-field system, which had probably been matured and improved during Roman rule, and by which the population of the district had been supported during the three generations between the departure of the Roman governors and the West Saxon conquest.
But it may perhaps be urged that these districts, conquered so late asA.D.570, may have been exceptionally treated. If this were so, it must be borne in mind that the whole of central England—i.e. the counties described in the second volume of the Hundred Rolls as to which the evidence for the existence of the open-field system was so strong—was included in the exception. Indeed, if the line of the Icknild way be extended along Akeman Street to Cirencester, Bath, and Gloucester, the line of the Saxon conquests which were later thanA.D.560 would be pretty clearly marked. The laws of Ine, pointing backwards as they do from their actual date, reach back within two or three generations of the date of the Saxon conquest of this part of Old Wessex.