Customs' duties- village byelaws and rural regulation

This book is a study of how our countryside and farming used to be regulated, before Parliament began to legislate on a national scale. Before that every individual community controlled its fields, its roads, its houses and its rivers; indeed, no aspect of life went unsupervised- whether it was pastimes, the making of fires or the ownership of dogs. Everyone in England lived within a detailed web of communal rules, which this book examines. Its seven chapters study how manors were organised, what rules applied to farming, building, drainage, boundaries, the use of woodland and other resources and to personal conduct, and how and why these rules were replaced.

This is a groundbreaking study, as no other book has tried to survey so completely all the different facets of communal regulation found in the English countryside in early modern times. It is a comprehensive account of this vital area of law. The text is 167 pages in length.

John Kruse, the author, has also written books on the regulation of livestock by manors (Scabby horses & unrung swine, 2012) and on the modern enjoyment of rights of common (Common land, 2011)).