lds of antiquarian interest, has devoted particular attention
to this matter, and for what follows we are indebted entirely to his
industrious research. He points out that "the old village community was
organized and self-acting," and "possessed a body of officers and
servants which made it independent of outside help." These officers and
servants were, in fairly numerous instances, retained long after the
village had outgrown its primitive limits. In quite a variety of places
we meet with pound-keepers, pound-drivers, and pinders; and the hayward
also has been found in as many as fifteen different towns. In the same
list are included the brookwarden of Arundel, the field-grieve of
Berwick-on-Tweed, the grass-men of Newcastle-on-Tyne, the warreners of
Scarborough, the keeper of the greenyard in London, the hedge-lookers of
Lancaster and Clitheroe, the molecatcher of Arundel, Leicestershire, and
Richmond, the field-driver of Bedford, the herd, the nolts-herds, the
town swine-herds of Alnwick, Newcastle, Shrewsbury, and Doncaster, the
pasture-masters of Beverley and York, the moss-grieves of Alnwick, the
moormen and mossmen of Lancaster, the moor-wardens of Axbridge, the
fen-reeves of Beccles and Southwold, and the woodwards of Havering and
Nottingham.

It will occur to most people that, if these offices were maintained, the
reason must have been something more than the mere force of
conservatism, great as that has been in the steady evolution of English
life; and such was undoubtedly the case in most of, if not all, the
cases cited. In other words, the townsmen, individually, as a body, or
in the persons of a limited number of elect, continued to enjoy certain
rights, and to hold a financial stake, in the soil surrounding that on
which their town was planted. The officers were often paid not in cash,
but in kind, either a quantity of grain being allotted to them or a
piece of land. The latter form of remuneration, which was the more
common, is exemplified at Doncaster, where there is a field called the
Pinder's Balk, which the pinder cultivated for his own profit. At
Malmesbury, it appears, he occupied the position of honour held in other
towns by the Mayor, and his salary is represented by a piece of land
called the Alderman's Kitchen.

Let us now turn to the communities themselves. At Nottingham resident
burgesses have a right, falling to them in order of seniority, to the
"burgess part"--i.e., a piece of land, either