statute was only made more stringent in its terms, the provision being introduced that in case hogs, goats, and other cattle were killed, either through wantonness or carelessness in the effort to drive them from unenclosed land upon which they were trespassing, the person guilty of the act should pay double their value as a compensation to the owner. A legal fence was four and a half feet in height, and closed to the bottom. The owner of live stock breaking through this fence, and inflicting serious injury to crops, was compelled to make the amplest satisfaction for the damage committed.[1]
It can only be inferred, that the principal fence in use in Virginia in the seventeenth century was the worm fence. There are references to rails as early as 1621; in that year, Mr. Whitaker, a leading planter, is stated to have “railed” in one hundred acres as a protection to the vines, grain, and other erops which he had under cultiva- tion in this area of ground.[2] An order of the General Court in 1626, required all who lived in those parts of the Colony where the cattle ranges were situated, to rail, pale, or fence" their tilled lands, a clear recognition of a distinction in the methods of enclosure. At a much later date, the charge was brought against Robert Beverley, that instead of using a troop of soldiers under his command as a guard for the Governor, he had set them to felling trees, and making and "toating rails." [3] Among the terms
- ↑ Hening's Statutes, vol. I, pp. 244, 332. An instance is given in the records of York County of a man who had failed to fence his land properly, injuring to such a degree the sow of a neighbor, which had broken into his grain field, that it was " utterly lost." He was compelled by order of court to replace this sow by two sows, each two years of age. Records of York County, vol. 1638-1648, p. 281, Va. State Library
- ↑ Abstracts of Proceedings of the Virginia Company of London, vol. I, p. 136.
- ↑ Grievances of Gloster County, 1676, British State Papers, Colonial; Winder Papers, vol. II, pp. 153-156, Va. State Library.
