50 ENCLOSURES OF THE FIFTEENTH III 



would appear, had either never been under the system of 

 common cultivation, or had early escaped from it. Some were 

 old woodland districts, which were enclosed directly from the 

 woodland condition. Under this category we may place 

 Kent, the weald of Surrey, and Sussex, part of Suffolk, and 

 East Essex, Herts., NW. Warwickshire and East Wor- 

 cestershire. In others, such as East Norfolk and East 

 Suffolk, we find a survival of the one-field system, which 

 is characteristic of many parts of North Germany and 

 Denmark. Here crops had been grown continuously year 

 by year, fertility being maintained by manuring, a system 

 which would naturally lead to enclosing. 1 



When we pass to the South-Western counties in this 

 group, namely South and West Dorset, West Somerset, 

 Devon, and Cornwall, another explanation may be found. 2 

 Here many of the settlements had from the very first been 

 those of detached homesteads according to the Celtic type 

 rather than of the nucleated Anglo-Saxon village, 3 and in 

 all probability the Celtic system of run-rig had existed, as 

 we know it did in Wales, which with its method of annual 

 redistribution would, by a natural process, lead the way to 

 permanent occupation and consequent enclosure, 4 while in 

 Kent the open commonable field was the exception. 5 



Further, in Cornwall, as Carew (1600) explains, a system 

 of leases for three lives, the lessees being, after the tenant 

 himself, the widow and the son, was also very common, a 

 method still existing in Devonshire under the names of 

 landboote and newtake, which was sometimes adopted for 



1 The one-field system is also found in parts of Lincolnshire. 



2 Possibly the same would be to some extent true of Hereford, 

 Shropshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, and part of Gloucestershire. 



s Cf. Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen, esp. ii. 185. 

 4 FOT the Run-rig system cf. Slater, Enclosures, p. 165. 

 8 Slater, Enclosures, p. 230 ; Gay, Transactions Royal Hist. Soc., 

 xvii. 593. 





