Despite plenty of work on enclosure and the riots against it, the ‘political culture’ of common lands remains obscure, despite considerable interest amongst social historians in ‘everyday politics’ and ‘weapons of the weak’. This article attempts to recover something of that culture, asking what political meaning was ascribed to certain actions, events and landscape features, and what tactics commoners used to further their micro-political ends. Using a systematic study of interrogatories and depositions in the equity Court of Exchequer, it finds a complex array of political weaponry deployed in commoning disputes, from gossip, threats and animal-maiming to interpersonal violence. In addition, it shows that the need to establish precedent, or ‘long-usage’, meant that certain physical acts and features were imbued with political meaning: acts of use, perambulations, old ridge-and-furrow, speech, even dying whispers, could all mean something in the politics of the commons. Moreover, commoners could be subject to moral scrutiny as neighbours; with antisocial behaviour liable to be used against them in disputes. All in all, it is argued that we are only just beginning to recover the politics of the English commons, and that there was much more to them than enclosure rioting.
