Manorial court rolls reveal that peasants were not averse to treating what was ostensibly seigneurial space as if it were common land, albeit perhaps in a more clandestine manner. This is most apparent through acts of poaching, but it is possible to develop the idea further by assessing other incidences of trespassing on the lord’s land. This includes prohibited spaces within the settlement, but frequently features trespass in the fields beyond the vill — arguably space within which some peasants had legitimate access, as they provided labour services to the lord. Generally, trespass considered in this modern sense has been avoided by many historians, largely because of the difficulty of determining whether peasant trespass was accidental or deliberate, or whether the payment of a fine essentially authorised peasant access. However, a detailed analysis of the Walsham incidents, alongside consideration of the motivational impetus behind some intra-peasant trespass noted above, offers some interesting insights into peasant trespass on the demesne. Assessing the various trespass locations is illuminating. In the years in which there is a marked increase in trespass and ensuing damage, the focus centred on arable land, and Fig. 2 two outlines two such periods. It is possible that manorial officials were more alert to potential trespass on the arable. However, it is also possible that some of these acts were politically motivated, and directed against the lord. Perhaps the peasants deliberately
chose to focus their efforts in damaging what they believed to be the most important accessible element of the lordly landscape. The Man–Wodebite and Hawys-Coggeshall disputes have already emphasised the importance of crop-producing land. Anti-seigneurial trespass and damage of this nature would be more likely to have been seen as accidental rather than would an open attack on the manorial complex. This action fits neatly within the range of passive actions undertaken by peasants in modern societies, and also with the idea that accessibility affected spatial organisation: open fields were the only seigneurial spaces designed to be easily accessed by all peasants. Another crucial point is that between 1316–1345, 47 per cent of destruction to the demesne generated by trespass was not recorded as having been caused by livestock; increasing to almost 60 per cent when isolating cases in which cereals were damaged, and 70 per cent where beans and peas were trampled. Consequently, accidental damage caused by itinerant livestock seems not to have been the principal reason for the majority of trespasses at Walsham in this period. This is demonstrated by a 1316 case involving Matilda Gilbert, who was fined 14d. ‘for damage done in the lord’s corn’, in this instance we are told that she carried away a bushel of barley and a peck of beans (CRWW: Lock 1998, p. 35). Other cases indicate that peasants were making illegal paths, and driving their carts, over demesne land. These are not isolated incidents; however, it is possible that some of these cases did involve untended livestock which went unrecorded. Manorial court rolls can occasionally be frustrating in the extreme in offering a glimpse of the events in question, but leaving historians guessing at the full story. But we know that not all cases concerning damaged crops were due to straying animals, and so it is worth considering that a reasonable quantity may relate to damage caused by the feet and cartwheels of peasants taking shortcuts or demonstrating little concern for demesne crops. An assessment of key fourteenth-century events reveals some correlation with increased rates of landed trespass at Walsham, although spikes in activity do not always correspond