corn harvest varies considerably, these dates cannot have been fixed.

The stock, therefore, besides the common pasture, had after harvest
the grazing of the common arable fields and of the meadows. The common
pasture was early 'stinted' or limited, the usual custom being that
the villager could turn out as many stock as he could keep on his
holding. The trouble of pulling up and taking down these fences every
year must have been enormous, and we find legislation on this
important matter at an early date. About 700 the laws of Ine, King of
Wessex, provided that if 'churls have a common meadow or other
partible land to fence, and some have fenced their part and some have
not, and cattle stray in and eat up their common corn or grass; let
those go who own the gap and compensate to the others who have fenced
their part the damage which then may be done, and let them demand such
justice on the cattle as may be right. But if there be a beast which
breaks hedges and goes in everywhere, and he who owns it will not or
cannot restrain it, let him who finds it in his field take it and slay
it, and let the owner take its skin and flesh and forfeit the rest.'

England was not given over to one particular type of settlement,
although villages were more common than hamlets in the greater part of
the country.[12] The vill or village answers to the modern civil
parish, and the term may be applied to both the true or 'nucleated'
village of clustered houses and the village of scattered hamlets, each
of a few houses, existing chiefly on the Celtic fringe. The population
of some of the villages at the time of the Norman Conquest was
numerous, 100 households or 500 people; but the average townships
contained from 10 to 20 households.[13] There was also the single
farm, such as that at Eardisley in Herefordshire, described in
Domesday, lying in the middle of a forest, perhaps, as in other