CHAPTER I 



The Two- and Three-Field System 



Two-field townships left one-half of their arable fallow each 

 year, three-field townships one-third of it. Apart from this the 

 method of tillage employed by both groups was essentially the 

 same and may for the present be called the two- and three-field 

 system. The characteristics of this system have in a general way 

 long been known. No one, however, has ascertained in precisely 

 what way it differed from other field systems, at what time we 

 first get sight of it in England, in what parts of the island it was 

 then to be found, what irregularities it began in course of time to 

 manifest, and what was the history of its last years. This chapter 

 and the three following ones are designed to throw fight on these 

 questions. 



It is well first of all to determine the fundamental characteris- 

 tics of the system. Seebohm's description of Hitchin, based 

 upon the tithe map of 1816 and giving perhaps our most concrete 

 picture of a township under a three-field system, is after all not 

 quite complete or accurate. That there were six fields makes 

 Httle difference, since we know from a court roll that the six were 

 grouped by twos for a three-course rotation of crops. That in 

 one of these fields 48 owners together held 289 parcels of land, 

 each having from one to 38 parcels, is completely deduced from 

 the schedule of the tithe map. Nothing, however, is advanced 

 to show that these 48 owners held corresponding areas in other 

 fields. The map in which the author represents the " normal 

 virgate or yard-land " is, so far as we can see, imaginary.^ The 

 insertion of a fourteenth-century description of a virgate at 

 Winslow, furthermore, is ingeniously contrived to lead the reader 

 to think that its details applied as well to a Hitchin virgate in 

 1816; but it will be noticed that the Winslow terrier does not 

 divide its parcels between two or three or six fields. Seebohm 



' English Village Comrmmily, p. 27, map 4. The virgate, as will be explained, 

 was the full-sized holding of a villein or customary tenant. 



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