assarts

Perhaps twenty cottars, woodsmen and hewers of laborious assarts from the forests lay in cover against more than a hundred Welsh, and every man of the twenty braced himself, and knew only too well how great a threat he faced.

A Caregiver's Homage To The Very Old

These are the assarts, where sheep could be penned for the night, often in barns.

Wildwood

The comparative security offered by the presence of the canons 'steward and servants had drawn others to settle close by, and there were now assarts being hewn out of the neglected woods by enterprising younger sons.

The Confession of Brother Haluin

Sometimes the path emerged for a short way into more open upland where the trees thinned and clearings of heath appeared, for all this stretch of country was the northern fringe of the Long Forest, where men had encroached with their little assarts and their legal or illegal cutting of timber and pasturing of pigs on acorns and beech-mast.

The Rose Rent

The Long Forest, south and south-west of Shrewsbury, had survived unplundered longer than most of its kind, its assarts few and far between, its hunting coverts thick and wild, its open heaths home to all manner of creatures of earth and air.

The Devil's Novice

There were very ancient holdings along the rim which had once been assarts deep in woodland, and now had hewn out good arable land from old upland, and fenced their intakes.

The Devil's Novice

Scattered among the surrounding woods there were a few small, new assarts cut out of the forest by enterprising younger sons.

The Leper of Saint Giles