1 8 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



has. in short, grafted the parcels of a virgate of the time of Edward 

 III. the relation of which to " fields " remains uncertain, upon a 

 nineteenth-century tithe map, which has the equivalent of three 

 fields, but tickls in which we do not know the distribution of the 

 strips of the several owners.^ Everything at Hitchin may, of 

 course, have been as one is led to infer. The holdings may have 

 consisted of scattered parcels equally divided among three pairs 

 of fields; the existence of six fields, indeed, makes this probable, 

 or at least makes it probable that such had once been the case. 

 Yet proof of these facts should not be omitted in the description 

 and definition of a typical three-field township. There are in- 

 stances of townships which had three fields but in which a three- 

 field system did not prevail.'^ 



To repair the shortcomings of the Hitchin illustration, and to 

 amplify the description of a type of open field which was un- 

 doubtedly once widespread in England, it may be permissible to 

 summarize conditions in certain typical two-field and three-field 

 townships chosen from different counties. In order to make the 

 foundation sure, complete accounts of townships are desirable; 

 and these must, for the most part, be sought for in surveys of the 

 late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries or in later records. 



Since pictorial illustration, as Seebohm knew, is more readily 

 comprehensible than written documents, his happy example may 

 be followed and a tithe map first reproduced. That of a town- 

 ship in eastern Oxfordshire answers the purpose. The village of 

 Chalgrove Hes precisely within the area where in 1808 Arthur 

 Young noted the continuance of a three-course husbandry.'' The 

 tithe apportionment of the township was fixed in 184 1, just before 

 its enclosure in 1845; and the map, which is here sketched,^ in- 

 dicates all parcels, the areas and tenants being specified in a 

 schedule. 



^ An insert to the Hitchin map does, to be sure, show the scattered strips of 

 William Lucas, Esq., but without areas. ^ Cf. p. 314, below. 



' View of the Agriculture of Oxfordshire (London, 1809), p. 127. Cf . p. 124, below. 



* Owing to the reduction in scale, the number of strips in each furlong is not so 

 great as in the original, which measures some six feet by seven. The large irreg- 

 ular blocks of the old enclosures are also not shown; but no other important 

 details are omitted. The map is deposited with the Board of Agriculture in St. 

 James Square. 



