II THE GERMANIC ORIGIN NEW ENGLAND TOWNS '"Si Ton vcut lire radniiriiblc ouvrage de Tacite sur les moeurs des Germains, on Terra «|ue c'est d'eux que les Anglois ont tire I'idee de leur gouvernement politique. Ce Iwau systj^me a Cte trouvfi dans les bois." — Montesquieu. "I»iis Siudiuni des Genieindewcsens in Anierika, dem Sie sich jetzt widmen, wird sirher suhr fruchtltar werden. In dor Geiuciiide ist die grosse Mehre der Burger mehr ab im Stale veranlasst, an offentliclien Augeiegeiiheiten und gemeinsaraen Interessen lu botheiligen. Die Gemeinde ist iiberdem audi die Vorschule fur den Stat. Der Bau der Repiibliken hat seine tJrundlage in der Selbstandigkeit der Gemeinden."— ^/uw/^c/i^j. ".Ml New England is an aggregate of organized democracies. He that will under- stand the |Hiliiical cliaracter of New England must study the constitution of its towns, iu school!!, and its militia."— £a»ero/if. "If you wish to sec Old England, you must go to New England."— i^i-eeman. JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY STUDIES 1 N Historical and Political Science HERBERT B. ADAMS, Editor History is past Politics and Polities present History.— FreemoM II THE GERMANIC ORIGIN or NEW ENGLAND TOWNS Read before the Harvard Historical Society, May 9, 1881 By HERBERT B. ADAMS, Ph. D. Witli Notes oil Cooperation in University Worlz Published by the Johns Hopkins University BALTIMORE 1882 JOHN MURPHY & CO., PRINTERS, BALTIMOKE. THE GERMANIC ORIGIN F NEW ENGLAND TOWNS. The reproduction of the town and parish systems of Old England under colonial conditions in America is one of the most curious and suggestive phenomena of American history. The process was so quiet, so unobtrusive, so gradual, so like the growth of vegetation in spring time — in short, so natural, that it seems to have escaped the notice of many historians of the larger colonial life. They have dealt with questions of church and state, with patents and charters, Pilgrims and Puritans, Baptists, Quakers, wars, witches, colonial unions and struggles for national independence, but the origin and growth of that smaller communal life within the colonies has been somewhat neglected. And yet these little communes < were the germs of our state and national life. They gave the colonies all the strength which they ever enjoyed. It was the towns, parishes and counties that furnished life-blood for church and state, for school and college, for war and peace. In New England especially, towns were the primordial cells of the body politic. In all the colonies, civic communities , were the organic tissues, without which the colonial body would have been but a lifeless mass. At the opening meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which met in Boston August 26, 1880, Mr. Lewis H. Morgan, in his inaugural address, paid the following tribute to the towns of New England : " Your Excellency, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 5 6 The Germanic Origin of without intonding to depart from the proprieties of the occa- sion, it muv be proper to say that those of us who come from beyond the Hudson can but feel that in entering New Eno'hind we reach the birthplace of American institutions. To some of us it is the land of our fathers, and we cannot approach the precincts of their departed presence without the sentiment of filial veneration. Here they laid broad and doej) the foundations of Americau freedom, without which American science would have been an infant in leading-strings to-dav. Here was developed the township, with its local self- government, the basis and central element of our political system. Upon the township was formed the county, composed of several towns similarly organized ; the State composed of several counties, and, finally, the United States, composed of several states; each organization a body politic, with definite governing powers in a subordinate series. But tiie greatest of all, in intrinsic importance, was the township, because it was and is the unit of organization, and embodies the great jirincijile of local self-government. It is at once the greatest and the most important of American institutions, because it determines the character of the State and National Govern- ment. It is also historically significant because it shows that American Democracy may justly claim to be the daughter of that Athenian Democracy which generated and produced the most signal outburst of genius and intellect in the entire history of the human race. Nor is this presage of the future without its own significance. What was achieved for philos- <>l)hy and art under the free institutions of Athens may yet be achieved for science in the evolution of the same forces in America."* Mr. Morgan's recognition of the historic significance of New England towns, in their relation to science and national growth, addressed as this recognition was to the chief magis- trate of Massachusetts, recalled to mind the words of Gov- •Report in Boston Journal, August 26, 1880. New England Towns. 7 ernor Long himself in an oration delivered in June, 1877, on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the town of Hanover, Massachusetts. His words give an inner view of the life and character of New England towns, a subject which Mr. Morgan viewed chiefly in its external relation to history and science. " I believe in our towns," said Mr. Long. " I believe in their decency and simple ways. I believe in their politics, in their form and administration of government, in their school and church influences, in their democratic society, in their temperance organizations, in their neighborly charities, in their proud lineage and history, and in the opportunities they offer. I know that our fathers who founded them and put their money and labor, and their hopes into the institutions and character of these towns, did not mean they should decay ; that they should be abandoned, that any native born in them should turn his back upon them, or be prouder of a home elsewhere than in them. Their worth is not more in the things that are seen, than in the things that are not seen ; not more in the farm and shop and academy and railroad, that in the mellow, pious, soft, refining influences of charac- ter which pervades them like an atmosphere, and exhibits to you in humble cottages men and women plain in manner and dress, but of rare intelligence and refinement; men who think and read and are scholars and gentlemen, however humble their occupation ; women who are poets and sisters of charity ; where else do you find the like?" * It would be easy to multiply eulogies of New England towns, but difficult to voice more clearly their intrinsic worth and far-reaching historic significance than have the men whose words have been quoted. Seen from within, these New Eng- land towns and villages are as full to-day of youthful fresh- ness, quiet beauty, and energetic life as the demcs of Grecian Attika, in the spring-time of the world; seen from without Report in Old Colonj- Memorial, Plymouth, Mass., June 21, 1877. 8 The Germanic Origin of as an organic, deeply rooted, wide-ex])anding growth, New England's local institutions are like the tree Igdrasil, of 8canilinavian mythology, for the principle of local self-gov- ernment which they embody, takes hold upon all the past and upholds the future in its spreading branches. The importance of towns in the social and political struc- ture of New England has been recognized in passing by discerning travelers like Lafayette and Tocqueville, and, indeed, by certain New England publicists and historians; but most of these notices have been extremely cursory and more or less inaccurate. There is also a vast number of local histories, but they generally avoid the one important question, the genesis of the town as an institution. Most writers, espe- cially local historians, assume that New England towns are either the offspring of Puritan virtue and of the Congrega- tional church, or else that they are the product of this rocky 8oil, which is sup[)Osed to produce free institutions spontane- ously, as it does the arbutus and the oak, or fair women and brave men. But the science of Biology no longer favors the theory of spontaneous generation. Wherever organic life occurs there must have been some seed for that life. History should not be content with describing effects when it can ex|tlain causes. It is just as improbable that free local insti- tutions should spring up without a germ along American shores as that English wheat should have grown here without l)lanting. Town institutions were propagated in New Eng- land by old English and Germanic ideas, brought over by Pilgrims and Puritans, and as ready to take root in the free H)il of America as would Egyptian grain which had been drying in a mummy-case for thousands of years. The town and village life of New England is as truly the reproduction of Old English types as those again are repro(bictions of the village community system of the ancient Germans. Investigators into American Institutional History will turn as naturally to the mother country as the historians of England turn toward their older home beyond the German New England Towns. 9 Ocean. "For the fatherland of the English race," says Green in his History of the English People, "we must look far away i'rom England itself. In the fifth centnry after the birth of Christ the one country which we know to have borne the name of Angeln or England lay within the district which is now called Sleswick,a district in the heart of the peninsula that parts the Baltic from the Northern seas. Its pleasant pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, its prim little town- ships looking down on inlets of purple water, were then but a wild waste of heather and sand, girt along the coast with a sunless woodland, broken here and there by meadows that crept down to the marshes and the sea. . . . Of the temper and life of the folk in this older England we know little. But irora the glimpses that we catch of it when conquest had brought them to the shores of Britain their political and social organization must have been that of the German race to which they belonged. In their villages lay ready formed the social and political life which is round us in England to-day. A belt of forest or waste parted each from its fellow villages, and within this boundary or mark the * township,' as the village was then called from the Uun ' or rough fence and trench * that served as its simple fortification, formed a com- plete and independent body, though linked by ties which were strengthening every day to the townships about it and the tribe of which it formed a part. . . . "The woodland and pasture-land of an English village were still undivided, and every free villager had the right of turning into it his cattle and swine. The meadow-land lay in like manner open and undivided from hay-harvest to spring. It was only when grass began to grow afresh that the common meadow was fenced off into grass-fields, one for each household in the village; and when hay-harvest was ♦According to the laws of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, the boun- daries of Massachusetts Towns were to be " a greate heape of stones, or a trench, of six foote long & two foote broade." — Mass. Col..Kec., ii, 210. 2 JO 2 he Germanic Origin of over fence and division were at an end a^am. The plow-land alone was permanently allotted in eqnal shares both of corn- land and ial low-land, to the families of the freemen, though even the plow-land was subject to fresh division as the num- ber of claimants grew greater or less. . . . The lilie, the sover- eignty of the settlement resided solely in the body of the freemen whose holdings lay round the moot-hill or the sacred tree where the community met from time to time to deal out it,s own justice and to make its own laws. Here new settlers were admitted to the freedom of the townshij), and by-laws framed and headmen and tithing-man chosen for its gover- nance. Here plow-land and meadow-land were shared in due lot among the villagers, and field and homestead passed from man to man by the delivery of a turf* cut from its soil. Here strife of farmer with farmer was settled according to the 'customs' of the township as its elder men stated them, and four men were chosen to follow headman or ealdorman to liundred-court or war. It is with reverence such as is stirred by the sight of the head-waters of some mighty river that one looks back to these village moots of Friesland or Sleswick. It was here that England learned to be a ' mother of Parlia- ments.' It was in these tiny knots of farmers that the men from whom Englishmen were to spring learned the worth of j)ublic opinion. . . . The 'talk' of the village moot ... is tiie groundwork of English history." f I'hus, English historians. Green, Freeman and Stubbs, recognize their older fatherland. The origin of the English Constitution, as Montescpiieu long ago declared, is found in * The custom of convoying land by turf and twig, ramo et cespiie, •ccordine to mediceval usage, was once known in Salem. In 1695, John Riuk granted ft homestead to his son Thomas before witnesses, and, as I»«rl of the act of conveyancing, took hold of a twig in the garden, saying, " Here, son Thomas, I do, before these two men, give you possession of Ihi* land by tiirlfc and twigg."— Felt, Annals of Salem, i, 187. Cf. Lav- eleye, Primitive Property, 121, note 3. t Green, llistory of the English People, vol. i, ch. 1. New England Towns. 1 1 the forests of Germany. If we read, said this ilhistrious Frencliman, who was as fervent an admirer of En^huid as Tocqueville was of America, if we read the admirable work of Tacitus concerning the manners and customs of the Teu- tons, we shall find that it was from tliem that the Enfjlish derived their political system.* Voltaire was accustomed to ridicule INIontesquieu for his Teutonic predilections, but the researches of Palgrave, Kemble, Stubbs and Sir Henry Maine have estal)lished the truth of this Germanic view. The tree of English liberty certainly roots in German soil. Proofs of this fact were first made fully apparent to English historians by the labors of those patient German specialists, Von Maurer, Hanssen, Meitzen, Nasse and George Waitz, who have shown in the early Constitutional History of Germany the same or- ganizing power as Canon Stubbs has exercised in writing the Constitutional History of England. The amount of valuable details which German specialists in Institutional History have dug up from the rich soil of mediaeval Germany is something marvellous \f> contemplate. To attemj)t even a resum<;i in a sketch of this character would be to attempt the impossible. But along the lines of this ])ioneer work, through guiding vistas of light now made in the German forests by years of German toil, the American student may wander at will, noting such points as may prove of suggestive interest to the younger Germany and the newer England beyond the Atlantic. The student has only to cross the river Neckar from Hei- delberg to find himself in the Odenwald, or forest of Wodan, the most classic as well as the most primitive region in all Germany. The student has only to travel a few hours south- ward from the Odenwald and the Bergstrasse to reach the lieart of the Black Forest. In either of these parts of Ger- many he can discover surviving features of the ancient village community system as described by Tacitus. With the Ger- * Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, Livro xi, cli. G. 12 The Germanic Origin of mania for a uuide-book, let us follow the student through a Teutonic village. It is very generally known, says Tacitus, that the Germans do not live in cities, and also that they have no fondness for joining their plantations together. They en'ttle apart in different places, according as spring, or open field, or woodland attracts their fancy. Villages they jdant, not according to our fashion, with closely connected or adjoin- ing buildings, but every man surrounds his own house with a fence, either for security against accident by fire, or because they are such bungling architects.* There are two facts in this statement by Tacitus, which deserve special attention. The first fact is, that by the expression, "they settle apart in different places," colunt tliiicrcli ac diversi, is meant the individual farm or patriarchal hamlet, what the Germans call a Hof; the second fact is that bv the expression, "villages they plant," vicos locant, is meant the village community, what the Germans call a Dorf. Tacitus probably saw what every stranger sees to this day on vis«iting the country villages of South Germany, namely, co(npact settlements, but with separate buildings and home lots, exactly like those of a New England farming town. Stniggling hamlets, or isolated farms, there also must have been in the days of Tacitus as in the days of our Puritan fore- fathers. Doubtless many of these German hamlets grew into villages, just as the hamlets or villages of New England have in many cases grown into towns. The ending heim in many village names along the Bergstrasse, like Dossenheim, Wein- heiin, is clear indication of the original patriarchal character of .such places. The German heim is the same as the English home, Saxon hum, which appears in the names of so many old Engli>h places like Uoddingham, Billingham, Petersham, Hampton, (or Hometown), and the like. The distinction Wtween the hamlet and the village is perhaps one of degree rather than ..tie of kind. The Hof became the Dorf by a •TbcjIup, Germania, cap. xvi, (Baumstark's edition for Students, 58.) New England Towns. 13 natural process of develoi)ment. No one can say where the hamlet ends and tlie village begins. But let us proceed upon our tour of observation, Tiie traveler of to-day will find in the interior of the Odenwald far more primitive villages than in the Black Forest. The latter is now traversed by government roads in every direction, and even a railroad has been constructed in these latter days, so that hurrying travelers can behold the scenery from the cars! Things are no longer what th.ey were when Auerbach wrote his Black Forest Tales for children. But there is still much left to amuse and instruct the students who tramp through the Forest every Whitsuntide vacation {Pfingsten) from Hei- delberg, Freiburg and other German universities. The Oden- wald is also visited, but not so frequently because it is more difficult in that primitive region to obtain food and drink, except upon one or two main routes. Traversing either the government chaussees or the common dirt roads through the Odenwald or Black Forest, the student may explore the numerous valleys and forest villages, which are to this day skirted with evergreen forests, dimly suggesting to his fancy the ambuscades into which the Roman legions fell when they j)enetrated the Teutoburger Wald. In such forests liberty was nurtured. Here dwelt the people Rome never could conquer. In these wild retreats the ancient Teutons met in council upon tribal matters of war and peace. Upon the forest hill-tops they worshipped Wodan, the All Father; in the forest valleys they talked over, in village-moot, the lowly affairs of husbandry and the management of their common fields. Here were planted the seeds of Parliamentary or Self-Government, of Commons and Congresses. Here lay the germs of religious reformations and of popular revolutions, the ideas which have formed Germany and Holland, England and Xew England, the Uniled States in the broadest sense of that old Germanic institution. What now are the external characteristics of one of these primitive forest-villages? Emerging from the wood or rocky 14 The Germanic Origin of defile, the traveller comes suddenly upon a snug little settle- ment lurched upon the sunny hillside or nestling in some broadening meadow. Surrounded by forest, this settlement is indeed a Mark, or, as Americans would say, a "clearing." liiedeke is here better than Tacitus, and you will discover liiat the place is called perhaps Schoenwaid, or Beautiful Forest, or possibly Schoenau, or Beautiful Meadow. Such vilhu'es are usually planted near a brook or some constant stream, and frequently bear a name like Rohrbach or Lauter- bnch, either of which terms would signify the same as Roaring Brook, so familiar in New England. An ancient part of Salem, (that part which was the home of George Peabody, the philanthropist), was once known as Brooksby. These Ger- man villiKH'S are made up of little houses, separate from one another, but withal tolerably compact, with outlying fields divided into narrow strips, as shown by the growing crops. Let us enter one of these villages and see how the houses are constructed. The first impression is that they are rather rude and bungling. That is exactly what Tacitus thought when he saw their prototypes. Low-roofed and thatched with straw, which is held down perhaps by stones, with wide spreading eaves and rude wooden frame-work, filled in often- times with rough stones plastered together, these huts alto- gether remind the modern traveller of Swiss chalets. The inhabitants appear to live in the upper part of these one storied buildings, for there is a stone stair-case outside leading up to an elevated doorway, and underneath there is often a- 8tal)le for cattle, although in some houses calves and children may be seen growing up together. Underneath the projecting roof at the gable ends of the houses are beehives of wicker work, ujilu'ld by a beam or shelf. If a stranger enters one of these forest villages on a day in June, he will hear nothing but the humming of the bees; for men, women and children are all in the hay-fields. And this brings us to a consideration of that old system of co-operative husbandry and common fields, which are the New England Towns. 15 most peculiar features of a German villajre community. In the haying season, to this day, in many parts of Germany, the villagers may be seen gathering the grass-crop together. To this day, in some localities, the fallow and stubble lands are used in common by tiie whole village for the pasturage of cattle and the feeding of swine. Village cow-herds, swine- herds and goose-herds are still employed in many parts of Germany. To this day the arable land of the Mark is tilled under certain communal laws. The time of harvesting and the time of allowing the cattle and swine of the village to enter upon the stubble lands is still determined by agreement among the inhabitants. The narrow, unfenced strips of land stretching up the hillsides to the forest-border, bear striking evidence that they were originally formed by the allotment of some ancient common field. In the Contemporary Review, July, 1881, there is a pleasant picture of village customs in the Thuringian forest by Pro- fessor W. Steadman Aldis, in an article entitled, "Notes from a German Village." The village described is Gross Tabarz, where the Professor spent a summer vacation with his family. " The economic state of the village, which is only a type of many others in the district, is decidedly primitive. Every well-to-do family has its little strip of ground, or sometimes several such strips have been accumulated in one family by inheritances or intermarriages. The village butcher, with whose family ours was soon on tolerably intimate terms, was the owner, or at least the cultivator with perpetual rights, of many little fields situated in almost as many parishes. . . . During the spring and summer, while the grass in the meadows is allowed to grow for hay, or for Grummet, as the second crop is called, the cows and geese are alike ban- ished from the private land, and are taken under the charge of a Hirt on to the common land, the borders of the roads, or the small bits of mountain meadow among the forests not allotted by the Gemeinde to private owners. , . . After the second crop of hay has been all gathered in, which is supposed 1(\ ■ The Germanic Origin of to be acliieved by the beginning of September, and for the iratherinix of which the village schools have a special holiday, the meadows are open to the cattle and geese of all the inhab- itants, and the Hirts have no longer such an arduous task. The pasture land becomes again for the time the proi)erty of the Commune, the 'common land' which it originally was, and is dotted with red oxen or snow-white geese. During the months of July and August, the whole population, male and female, is for the most part occupied in getting in the crops of different kinds, which seem to form a continuous series, beginning with the first crop of hay, at the beginning of July, and ending with the Grummet, or second crop, early in Seplember." Let us now glance at our guide-book and see what Tacitus savs concerning the customs of the ancient Germans in the matter of land holdings. Lands, he says, are taken up peri- odically by the whole body of cultivators in proportion to their number. These lands they afterwards divide up among themselves according to their dignity or title. The wide extent of open S|)ace renders the division of fields an easy matter. The situation of the plough-lands they change every year, and there is land enough left over. They do not attempt to improve by labor so vast and fertile a tract of ground, for the siike of })lanting orchards, laying out grass-plots, and irriga- ting gardens; the only crop they want is wheat or barley.* In the custom, mentioned by Tacitus, of shifting the situa- ' tion of the ploughed lands every year, we may perhaps see a germ of the famous Three Field System, which is of some importance in tracing the historical connection between the agrarian customs of England and those of ancient Germany. The sy.stem was ])robably perfected before the Saxon conquest of liritain, and has survived in both countries until our own times. •On tlie exposition of cap. xxvi of Tacitus' Germania, cf. Baumstark's edili.-n, Nai-fio-g Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages (Appendix), Hiid Dr. Denman W. Koss' "Studies," i, 23; ii, 12. New England Towns. 17 Imagine a river valley, like that of the Neckar, which skirts tlic Odenwald, and a little stream flowing down from the hillside forest into the rivqr below. In the Odenwald many villages are built along the line of such streams or brooklets, which serve as a kind of water main-street for the villagers living along the bank. The houses lie ai)art, as Tacitus says in his description of a German village, and every villager has his own houselot and enclosure. The whole village domain is the Mark, or clearing. It belonged orig- inally and belongs still to the village community as an organ- ized body, as a civic unit. Certain parts, of course the best, were originally set off for tillage; other parts remained common for- wood, pasture, and meadow, Wald, Weide, and Wiese. The Three Field System relates, however, not to the latter divisions, but to the arable land and to that only. The land used for tillage was divided up into three great fields, first, second, and third. Each villager had one or more lots in each great field, but the peculiarity of the system lies in the fact that every villager was obliged to jflant his lot or lots in each great field, according as the whole village should determine. For example, if the proprietors, in village-mote assembled, should resolve by a majority to plant the first great field with wheat, an individual proprietor would have no alternative; he must do as his neighbors agree. And so of the second great field, which, perhaps, the villagers would vote to plant with oats or barley; and likewise of the third field, which must lie fallow for one year. A rude system of rotation of crops was customary in all Teutonic farming com- munities. The fallow land of one year was cultivated the year succeeding; and the spring crop of one field gave place to a winter crop, or else lay fallow in turn. The most inter- esting fact about this Three Field System is that it indicates a communal spirit even in the management of lands allotted and perhaps owned in severalty; it shows that the arable land as well as the pasture, meadow, and woodland, was under the control of the village community and subject to communal jg The Germanic Origin of •leorees. There is reason to believe, from the passage in Taci- tus above quoted, that the situation of the ploughed lands was changed from time to time, and that land devoted to tilhiire was afterwards turned into pasture or grass land, and oilier portions of the village domain were allotted for plough- \u(r in severalty. The custom of re-distribnting farming lands, after a certain term of years, was very general, not only in Teutonic, but in all Aryan villages. The term varied with different nations and in different communities. Origi- nally, with the Germans, a fresh distribution was probably made every year, but as the Three Field System developed, the term became longer. In Russia, as Wallace has shown in his interesting work, lands were once re-distributed every thirteen years. The field meetings of Teutonic farmers for ithe distribution of lands and the regulation of crops were the germs of English parish meetings and of New England town meetings. The village elders, still so called in Russia, although young men are frequently elected to the office, are the proto- type of the English Reeve and Four, and of the New Eng- land Town Constable and Board of Selectmen. In the year 1871 was published, in England, under the ans|)ices of the Cobden club, a translation of a little German treatise, by Professor Nasse,* of the University of Bonn, on the agricultural community of the middle ages and inclosures of the sixteenth century in England. It was a work which may be called epoch-making in the history of real property and of conmuinal institutions in Great Britain. It awakened English lawyers to a consciousness of the survival in their very miilst of a system of local land tenure older than the Feudal system and dating back at least to the time of the Saxon concjuest of Britain. Ever since the days of BlaeU- Btoue, lawyers had puzzled themselves to account for certain • Yirsl monlioncd to Ainerican readers by Professor William F. Allen in The Nation, Se|(leniber '2.2, 1870, from a notice in Sybel's Historische Xeiltchrift. Neio England Towns. 19 extraordinary customs of village land holding in England, for certain phenomena of joint ownership in commons, like the lammas lands, which were common to an entire village for pasturage, after the 13th of August, old style, or like the so-called "shack lands," wiiich, after the above date, were common to the owners or possessors, but not to the whole village. Lawyers had found no solution to the problem of the origin of such communal practice, except in special j)rivi- leges granted to tenants by the lord of the manor, or else in immemorial custom. Professor Nasse derived his facts concerning the existence of such communal land-holdings in England, from a report of a Select Committee on Commons Inclosure, instituted in order to frame laws for the dissolution of common holdings, by order of the House of Commons, 1844, and from the reports of the Board of Agriculture, about the beginning of the present century, under charge of Sir John Sinclair. These latter reports were abridged by Mr. Marshall, a man often referred to by Sir Henry Maine. It appears that Marshall at this very early period was strongly impressed by the mere facts concerning the vast extent of communal land-holdings in England, and had come to the conclusion that once "the soil of nearly the whole of England was more or less in a commonable state."* The reports above mentioned revealed some most remarka- ble facts concerning the survival of communal land holdings in parishes where the Feudal system was supposed to have centralised all forms of folkland, and to have destroyed all free peasant ])ro])rietaries. In Huntingtonshire, out of 240,000 acres, 130,000 were found to be held in common, that is, by no individual owners in particular, but by village or farming communities, uniler the supremacy of some manorial lord. * Nasse on the Agricultural Community of the MidJle Ages and Inclo- surcs of the Sixteenth Century in England. London: Maciuilhin &, Co., 1871. 20 The Gei-manic Origin of 111 AViltshirc, bv far the largest part of the land was thus lielil; in Berkshire, one-half the county; in Warwickshire, 60,000 acres; and in Oxfordshire, over one hundred parishes held lands on the communal system; and in Northampton- shire eighty-nine parishes perpetuated this ancient type of village land holding. Nasse says, "in by far the greater part "of England the old English peasantry . . . held the land in common, precisely as the present villagers of the greater part of middle Europe hold theirs." * There were found to be three sorts of commonable ground. 1, arable; 2, meadow ; and 3, pasture land. The arable land was Ibund very generally to be subject to certain com- munal laws, in regard to tiie rotation or harvesting of crops. The Three Field System, as already described, was frequently discovered in English parishes, and it was also noticed that the three great divisions of arable land were often separated from one another by broad strips of grass land, which were kept common, in order to eke out the pasture in the fall of the year after the crops had been gathered and the stubble lands thrown open to the village cattle. The meadow lands were either held wholly in common, or by a system of shifting peveraltics, whereby grass-lots were assigned for the season to individuals, and were then again made common for pas- turage and subject to a fresh distribution.! Community of })asturage was found to be of very general occurrence in the rural districts of England. There were two sorts, stinted pasturage, i. e., where villagers were limited as to' ♦Naggp, 6, 9, of. extract from Marshall, p. 100: "Each parish and township (at least in the more central and northern districts) comprised dilTtTent descriptions of land, having been subjected during successive BUfa to »p<.-cilied modes of occupancy under ancient and strict regulations, which lime had converted into law. These parochial arrangements, h, sliows that there are still over a million and a half acres of Common Land, f and the report of the Conunons Preservation Society says that "five million acres of Common Land have been enclosed since Queen Anne's rejirn. " Much of the land remaining unenclosed is called "lV)wn Land" or "Commons;" it consists of great open ppaces and public fields or heaths, upon which villagers pas- ture their cattle and boys play ball. Societies have been formed for the jjreservation of these tracts, especially when, like Ilampstead Heath, they are in the vicinity of large cities. Essjivs on the advantage of " Open Spaces," and on the " Future of Our Commons," have appeared in the English reviews. Mr. Lel'evre, in a letter to the Times, quoted by Octavia Hill, says : " The right of the public to use and enjoy Cotumons, (which they have for centuries exercised), it must be admitted, is not distinctly recognised by law, though there is a remarkable absence of adverse testimony on the subject. The law, however, most fully recognises the right of the village to its green, and allows the establishment of such right by evitlcnce as to playing games, etc., but it has failed as yet to rcf'ognise the analogy between the great town and its C(»inniot), and the village and its green, however complete the anal«»gy may be. But some of these rights of Common, which are now so i)rized as a means of keeping Commons open, had, if legal theory is correct, their origin centuries ago in custom. For long they had no legal existence, but the courts of law at last Uarncd to recognise custom as conferring rights. The cu-tom has altered in kind ; in lieu of cattle, sheep, and pigs tiinx-ij out to j)a.sture on the Commons, human beings have •>■«•►'•, 1:5. tOcUvia Hill, "Our Common Lund," 8. New England Towns. 23 taken their place, and wear down tlie turf instead of eating it." We have seen how the Saxons transferred from ancient Germany to the eastern part of England the village commu- nity system and agrarian customs of their forefathers; let us now see how the dominant or communal idea of these villages and some of these old Teutonic practices in the matter of land-holding, were transferred across another and broader sea than the German ocean, and took root in the eastern parts of New England. States are not founded upon shipboard, though the vessel be as staunch as the Mayflower, and constitutions cannot be framed upon paper, though it be the Pilgrims' com{)act. A band of Saxon pirates tossing upon the waves of the North Sea and preparing to descend upon the coasts of Britain could not constitute a State, in passage, however excellent their discipline, however faithful their allegiance to the authority of Hengist and Horsa. But those Saxon pirates bore with them a knowledge of self-government, whicii, when rooted in the soil of Britain, grew into Saxon England and the law of the land. Mafrna Carta and the Bill of liiirhts are only the development of those germs of liberty first planted in the communal customs of our Saxon forefathers. The Constitution of England is not written at all; it is simply a rich but sturdy growth of popular institutions, derived orig- i^ially from the forests of Germany, and transjdanted across the sea. What is thus maintained and acknowledged con- cerning our Saxon forefathers, may likewise be urged con- cerning the Pilgrim fathers. They were merely one branch of the great Teutonic race, a single offshoot from the tree of liberty which takes deep hold upon all the past. This offshoot was transplanted to Plymouth, and it grew up, not like Leb- anon, filling the whole earth, but, to all appearances, like the first Saxon settlements of England and like other forms of local self-government, budding, spreaditig, and propagating after its kind. 24 The Germanic Ongin of The i.uj.M, u.iu'o of the territorial factor in the constitution of IMymouth CoK)uy has never been sufficiently emphasized. The iH?re«nal factor, i. c, the character, the virtues, and the rvligious real of the Pilgrims do not need to be further exIoIliHl. Americans are in no danger of forgetting the faith anil licr\>i.sin of those men and women who made their flight in winter acra>vs a barren sea to preserve the rights of con- N'ieniv, the rights of Englishmen, and good old English ways, but Americans, in their enthusiasm for men, have failed to ijoliiv ivriain important and fundamental things in the origin of IMvmoulh. Underneath all the phenomena of Pilgrim xeal and suffering, more enduring than the Pilgrims' noble ciiMipaet, unnoticed liUe the upholding power of earth, lies the primordial tact of the local settlement of the Pilgrims in a form of civic community older than Saxon England, older than the primitive church, and older than the classic states of aiuicjuitv. That form of civil community was based upon land. The elements of permanence and continuity in all civil society are based uj)()n the soil and the material interests connecteil with it. Generations of men are born and pass away, but an abiding relation to some fixed territory keeps civil wK'iety together and constitutes a state in the true sense of thai term. Government may exist upon shipboard or amoug wandering tribes of Indians, but no state or body |Hiliiic Gxw po.s-sibly endure unless it be grounded upon terri- torial interests of a stable and lasting character. No state without a people, and no state without land. These are the axioms of political science. Let us now incpiire into the exact nature of the common- wealth which the Pilgrims actually founded. Mourt's rela- tion, (so called from George Morton, who published it in England in 1622), a journal of the beginnings and proceed- inj^ of the English 'plantation settled at Plymouth in New KnjjIamI, a journal written, says Mr. Dexter, from day to day on the ground, gives us the best contemporary account of the New England Towns. 25 moile ill wliich the first village republic in New England was jjlanted. None of the so-called colony records go back to the foundation of the colony itself. But Mourt tells the whole story from the first landing, down to the town meeting of April 2, 1621, when Mr, John Carver was re-elected governor, being a man well api)roved. "After our landing and viewing of the places as well as we could, we came to a conclusion, [December 30] by most voyces, to set on the maine Land, in the first place on a high ground where there is a great deale of Land cleared and hath beene planted with Corne three or four years agoe, and there is a very sweet brooke runnes vnder the hillside and many delicate springs of as good water as can be drunke, . . . Thursday, the 28. of December, [January 7, N. S.] so many as could went to worke on the hill where we purposed to build our platforme for our Ordinance, and which doth com- mand all the plaine and the Bay, and from whence we may see farre into the sea, and might be easier impayled, having two rowes of houses and a faire street. So in the afternoon we went to measure out the grounds, and first, we tooke notice how many Families they were, willing all single men that had no wiues to ioyne with some Familie, as they thought fit, that so we might build fewer houses, which was done, and we reduced them to 19. Families; to greater Families we allotted larger plots, to euery person halfe a pole in breadth, and three in length, and so Lots were cast where euery man should lie, which was done, and staked out." — [Mourt's Rela- tion, edited by H. M. Dexter, 64, 67, 68.] On this tract of cleared land, or the village Mark, on the north side of the " very sweet brooke," which, like the springs spoken of by Tacitus, still attracted Teutonic fancy, and which is known to this day as the Town Brook, arose the first town or village community in New England. The first work was the construction of the so-called Common House, "about twenty loot square," say's Bradford, "for their common use, to receive them and their goods." The land was taken pos- 4 26 The Germanic Origin of TCSsion of as a communal domain, and tlie first labor bestowed U|K)n it was communal labor. But the Pilgrims, like the ancient Teutons, knew well that a principle of individuality must enter into the development of communal life. Like the Teutons, the Pilgrims regarded the family as the unit of social ortier, and gave scope for family interests in the division of house-lots ami in the construction of private dwellings. Like the Teutons again, the Pilgrims took up land in proportion to their number and immediate wants. Speaking of the size of the family allotments, the Journal says, "we thought this proportion was large enough at the first, for houses and g:irdens, to impale them around, considering the weaknes of our people," etc. Here, too, by a curious chance, an old Teutonic idea appears in the notion of fencing and impaling. The radical idea of a town (from Tan, Zim, modern German Ziiuu, a hedge) is that of a place hedged-in, for the sake of protection. "Tuesday the 9. January," [l9th N. S.] continues the Journal, " was a reasonable faire day, and wee went to labour that day in the building of our towne, in two rowes of houses for more safety: we divided by lott the plot of ground whereon to build our Towne." Professor Parker, in his paper read before the Massachu- setts Historical Society on "The Origin, Organization, and Influence of the Towns of New England,"* was condemning original sources when he criticised Mr. Baylies for using the word "Town" in his Historical Memoirs of New Plymouth as (lescriptive of the Plantation made in 1620. Baylies only paraphrased the quotation above made when he said the emigrants foun«l "a high hill which could be fortified in a manner so as to command the surrounding country," and re^olveut fencvil in common, together with a vast surround- inj; tract o( ahsohitely common and undivided land, used for {liiiiture and wootiland under communal reguhUions. It is im|>oriant to observe that, historically speaking, the word "Town" appliis more particuhirly to the village itself, and that the wonl •' Townsliij)," which is of very common occur- rence in the early local annals of New England, better char- oclerize-s the Town's landed domain. It is true that the latter term has fallen into disuse in New England, and for- tunately so, for with the definite legal idea now attached to this word Township in the Western ^States, as a tract of land bix miles square, the term no longer characterizes our Towns, which are far from being of any definite size or of any regular pattern. The word "Town" is now almost universally employed in New England to characterize the whole extent of the Town's domain, and properly, for almost everywhere |)opulation has swarmed from its old village-iiive, and houses are now built from one end of the Town to the other. But it i» curious to see how popular usage still clings to the old idea, when, for example, persons living at the "ends of the Town," talk abcnit going "into Town," "into the village," or to the "centre." The idea of a Town is like that of the Greek (Lrrv in distinction from the ttoAi; ; or the Latin w6s in dittinctiun from civitaa. This historical view is borne out by the iUlinition of a " Town " given by President Dwight in hi."* famous Travels in New England and New York, begun at the ••lose of the last century, when he wrote, "You must rfjucmber that by a Town I all along intend a collection of houMCH in the original village, and not those of the township." Let us turn now to an early description of the Town of Plyniouth, written by Isaack de liasieres, a French Protest- ant in the service of the Dutch West India Company as New England Towns. 29 Chief Commissary of New Netherlands (New York), wlio visited Plymouth in 1627 upon an embassy, and whom Gov- ernor Bradford called "a man of fair and genteel behavior." De Rasieres wrote concerning New Plymouth an interesting letter, which was discovered some years ago in the archives at the Hague* by John Romeyn Brodhead, Secretary of the American Legation at London. The letter was first ])rinted in the Collections of the New York Historical Society. The following is a brief extract: "New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill stretching east towards the sea-coast, with a broad street about a cannon shot of eight hundred [yards] long, leading down the hill, with a [street] crossing in the middle, northwards to the rivulet, and southwards to the land. The houses are constructed of hewn planks, with gardens also enclosed behind and at the sides with hewn planks, so that their houses and court-yards are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against sudden attack ; and at the ends of the streets there are throe wooden gates." f Town gates and stockades were very common in early New England villages, where they served not only for defence, but for agrarian and pastoral ])urposes. Upon the frontier, for example in the Connecticut valley, palisaded Towns were at one time a military necessity. The original idea of a Town reappears in the local records of Northampton, Hatfield, Deerfield, and Greenfield; for example, John Dickinson of Hatfield was allowed, by vote March 6, 161)0, *' liberty to remove his house into town " and retain his lot outside pro- vided he do his share of fortifying and build again upon his lot when he could do so without fear of the Indians. *' For many several years," says Judd in his manuscript collections *The use of the article in the name of this Town, the Hague, German der Haag, French la Haye, is extremely interesting as an historical sur- vival. Here is a developed Teutonic village called to this day The Hedge, just as the English word Town perpetuates the idea of the Saxon Tun. f Collections of tlie New York Historical Society, New Series, vol. ii. 30 The Germanic Origin of «»n Hatfield, " tlu' inhabitants were cooped up within these limits. Many had luits or liouses in the street." * In GretMifieKl it was voted on Soj)teniber 10, 1754 "to j)icquet thrti' houses in this district immediately." Individual houses were frefjiientiy thus impaled, and it is not improbable that the use of |»ieket fences to this day for separate inclosures in the rural districts nmy be a remote survival of that old Saxoa •JuJd. MS., Hadley and Hatfield, i, 148. The late Sylvester Judd, nutliur of tlie History of Hadley, one of the best local histories ever written in New Enijiund, left behind him an extensive luanuseript col- K"Ction, in many bound volumes,- of materials relating to the history of the Connecticut Valley, particularly of Northampton and of the tovsrns in that environment. It is unfortunate for this latter Town, one of the richest and rarest in New England for historical interest, that so capable a man aj< Mr. Judd was never in position, by reason of his pressing dutii's as editor of a country paper, to write a history of the valley. But his manuscript trea.sures have now been purchased by public-spirited citizens, and it is to be hoped that this collection, wb.ich is really the corner-stone of Northampton history, may be the first acquisition of the Forbes Library, that recent munificent endowment of over two hun- dred thousand dollars by a late citizen of the Town for a free public library composed "of works of science and the arts, in their broadest acci'ptation. of ancient and modern history, and of the literatures of our own and other nations." (Hlxtract from the Will of Judge Forbes). The Forb<« Library, the Clark Institute, Smith College and the Smith Chari- ties are noble institutions, and yet they sprang, historically, from seed sown by those simple agrarian communities, Northampton and Hatfield, which are worthy of more than passing attention. The Town Records of Norlhumjiton, are of remarkable interest and full of cases of " sur- vivnl." Secluded from association with the Bay Towns as were the>e inland comtnunitit'S of the Connecticut Valley, some of them like Wind- sor, Springfield and the Towns above, are really more interesting than many thtit lie further to the eastward. These Valley Towns are not only quite as ancient as the average of seventeenth century Towns, but on the whole rather more conservative, less influenced even by Puritan innova- tions. To the courtesy of the Judd family and of Mr. J. R. Trumbull, the writer of this monograph has been indebted for the use of the Judd manutcripU at various intervals and for various purposes ; also to Mr. Billings, K''gi?ter of Deeds in the County of Hampshire, for access to cwrly records of the county court and for copious extracts from the Town K«curd« of Ilatfleld. New England Towns. 31 instinct for palisading every indivithial home and house-lot, as we have already seen iti the case of Plymouth. An interesting commentary on the relation of the indi- vidual home and hamlet to the Town or village community, similarly enclosed, is given in Nasse's Agricultural Commu- nity in the Middle Ages (15), where he says, "The names of ])lace8 shows that, among the Saxons, only the dwelling- j)lace — that is, house and homestead — was inclosed; the arable land and the pastures being open and utifenced. Out of 1,200 names of j)laees which Leo collected from the first volume of Kemble's 'Codex Diplomat, ^vi Saxonici/ 187 were formed with tun. This word, it is well known, is iden- tical with the modern ' town,' the Dutch tuin (garden), and the German zaun, and was, as R. Schmid remarks, less used by the Anglo-Saxons to signify 'that wherewith a space is inclosed, than the inclosed space itself.' AVe may, however, see very plainly that it was principally house and homestead which bore this name; for instance, in the laws of Alfred I. § 2, in cyninges tune; § 13, on eorles tune. Even at the j)resent day the courtyard in the country in England is signi- fied by the word town. Apparently, as was also the case in Germany, not only the individual homesteads, but also sev- eral situated near each other, were surrounded by an inclo- sure; which explains the reason why not only the homestead, but also the whole village was called ' tun.' In many places — for example in the laws of Athelstan II. Fr. § 2, where an expiatory fine is to be divided among the poor; as well as in Edgar IV. c. 8 — the word 'tun' cannot be intended to be used for individual homesteads, but only for places, a signifi- cation which later became the ruling one." Nasse, in a foot- note, 3, |)age 16, says, "the old Jute law prescribes (from 1240 A. D.) iii, chap. 57, van tinmen tho makencle (on making hedges) 'that every village shall be inclosed by a hed»'-e,' and gives detailed rules for the duty of every villager to put up his part of the common fence which enclosed the whole village as well as single farmsteads." 82 The Germanic Origin of A cliaptor might be written upon the survival in New England of this ancient institution known as the " Common Fence." The local records of every old New England Town are lull of such references. Take the following from the MS. Kecords of Hatfield Side, January 14, 1660: "Agreed and vottnl at a side meeting [another case of Old English survival !] that there shall he a common fence made from Goodman Fellows to the landing place, every man fencing the end of liis lot, and Isaac Graves to fence his part next to Goodman Bool's meadow lot, the rest to be done in common." May 11, 1663, "Agreed at a side meeting that every man shall set down a stake with the two first letters of his name by every parcel of fence by the 13th of this month." It would be diilicult to say which is the more curious, the survival of " old Jute law," or this revival of old English usage. It has taken some time for hedgerows to find root again in New England, but Haywards, (not from hay, but from the Saxon Hege, wardens of the hedges,) Fence Viewers and Field Drivers, were offices that our ancestors had probably filled in the old country, and they revived them here at once. Hatfield Side votel>i;rM