30 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



small close and a few acres of meadow. In half of the customary 

 holdings the division of arable acres between the East and West 

 fields was equal; in the other half there was some inequality, 

 usually in favor of the East field. 



Two monastic manors of the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, Charl- 

 ton Abbots and Weston Birt, were surveyed with many others in 

 the time of Edward VI. In both the virgates were large, con- 

 taining in one township 48 acres of arable and in the other about 

 40 acres. The division of acres between the North field and the 

 East field of Charlton was even, between the North field and the 

 South field of Weston Birt nearly even. In neither township did 

 the copyholds have other closes than those near the village. With 

 each virgate at Charlton went nine acres in the common meadow, 

 with a virgate at Weston Birt seldom so much as an acre. 



The extension of the Cotswold area into Somerset brings us, a 

 little south from Bath, to South Stoke, which in 6 James I was 

 surveyed as one of the queen's manors. Here the enclosures were 

 larger, containing from ten to twenty acres in each holding. Occa- 

 sionally they had encroached upon the common arable fields, as 

 had those of Lawrence Smythe and Thomas Hudd. Such at 

 least seems to be the inference, since except in these instances 

 the arable was assigned in nearly equal parts to the East and West 

 fields. The meadow, too, had been enclosed. Thus, although 

 the township was obviously one of two fields, there had already 

 begun an attack upon the integrity of the system which we shall 

 see farther advanced in most townships of Somerset. 



In the large Dorsetshire township of Gillingham the same 

 change was under way in 6 James I. It had here gone so far that 

 inequahty in the di\ision of the arable of a holding between the 

 two fields was frequent. In some holdings meadow and pasture 

 even predominated over the arable; but the general apportion- 

 ment of the latter to the two fields. South and North,^ leaves no 

 doubt that a two-field system is described. 



Such are typical surveys from six of the counties in which the 

 two-field system was most often apparent. Berkshire, perhaps 

 more extensively characterized by two-field townships than any 



* A third unimportant field occasionally appears. 



