6 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



In contrast the author sketches the Celtic field system, referring 

 particularly to the aspect of a nineteenth-century Irish township ^ 

 ami to the testimony of early Welsh laws. As an account of 

 early agricultural arrangements Seebohm's treatment is defi- 

 cient in scope, his meagre evidence by no means warranting the 

 inference that the three-field system was prevalent throughout 

 England from the earliest times. 



So far as the structure of English village fields is concerned, 

 Seebohm was not the first to make inquiries. Nasse, in a brief 

 monograph, had already examined with some care the Anglo- 

 Saxon evidence to ascertain whether it showed the arable unen- 

 closed and parcelled out among the tenants in intermixed strips.^ 

 Having satisfied himself that it did, he turned to thirteenth- 

 century documents to inquire whether a two-field or a three-field 

 system was then prevalent. Rogers, as he noted, had surmised 

 that arable lands were at this time usually left one-half fallow 

 each year, and Fleta in the reign of Edward I had implied that 

 the two systems were co-existent. Since Nasse's own investiga- 

 tions revealed to him various instances of three-field husbandry in 

 contrast with only one description of two fields, he concluded 

 that in the thirteenth century the former was " decidedly the 

 prevaiUng system." ^ This view of Nasse's is what Seebohm, 

 in so far as he wrote of field systems, has made popular. Rogers's 

 conjecture is repeated by Vinogradoff, who, after pointing to nine 

 or ten two-field townships and noting that Walter of Henley as 

 well as Fleta was familiar with both systems, surmises that the 

 two-field rotation may have been '' very extensively spread in 

 England in the thirteenth century." * 



The e\ddence adduced regarding EngUsh field systems thus 

 proves to be somewhat slight — rather too slight to warrant 



1 Cf. below, p. 191. 



2 Erwin Nasse, On the Agricultural Community of the Middle Ages, and Inclosures 

 of the Sixteenth Century in England (translated by H. A. Ouvry, London, 1872), 

 pp. 19-26. Cf. below, p. 51 sq. 



' Ibid., 52-58. Most of Nasse's citations refer only to a three-course rota- 

 tion of crops, which does not necessarily imply a three-field system. Cf. below. 



pp. 44-45- 



* Paul Vinogradoff, Villainage in England (Oxford, 1892), pp. 229-230. 



