THE TWO- AND THREE-FIELD SYSTEM 29 



England will have to be interpreted. At this point it is there- 

 fore pertinent to inquire what counties can furnish two- and three- 

 field surveys like those above examined; for an answer to this 

 question will indicate roughly the extent of the system at the end 

 of the sixteenth century. 



It is clear that not every holding in a township need be in- 

 stanced to prove that the arable lay in two or three large open 

 fields. It is equally clear that freeholds, by reason of their small- 

 ness, their irregularity, and the social status of their proprietors, 

 were unrepresentative. Descriptions of copyholds, on the other 

 hand, nearly always reflect a two- or three-field system by the 

 approximately equal distribution of their arable between two or 

 three fields; hence ten or a dozen such descriptions from a town- 

 ship will suffice to inform us of the field arrangements existing 

 there. Adaptations of this sort have been made from several 

 surveys and arranged in Appendix I to show the extension of 

 the system illustrated by the surveys of Kington and Hand- 

 borough. ^ 



Tudor and Jacobean surveys of two-field manors most often 

 come from the upland region which begins with the northern 

 Cotswolds and extends to the Channel. Traversing it in this 

 manner, we start with a long Jacobean survey of Upper and 

 Nether Brailes, a township of southeastern Warwickshire. The 

 holdings are estimated in virgates of from eight to twenty acres, 

 all of them divided with precision between North field and South 

 field. There were practically no enclosures save the acre or two 

 attached to each messuage, but there was considerable meadow, 

 some five acres being appurtenant to the virgate. The tenants 

 had stinted common of pasture in as many as nine pastures. 



On the eastern slopes of the Cotswolds, just over from Brailes, 

 were many two-field Oxfordshire townships, well illustrated by 

 Shipton-under-Wychwood, a survey of which was made in 6 

 Edward VI. The customary holdings here usually formed con- 

 siderable farms of more than one virgate each, the virgate itself 

 containing as many as forty acres. To each farm were attached a 



1 The sources from which they are drawn are noted in each case, and the town- 

 ships to which they refer are located on the map which faces the title-page. 



