THE TWO- AND THREE-FIELD SYSTEM 33 



Joanna Archard and Joanna Syninge having thus decreased con- 

 siderably their acreage in the East field. Elsewhere, although the 

 distribution of the acres of a holding between East field, North 

 field, and Westham was not so precise as in many townships, 

 discrepancies are not great enough to call in question the 

 existence of a three-field husbandry. 



If we make an excursion from the southwestern counties toward 

 the east and north, we shall enter the less disputed domain of the 

 three-field system. Hampshire and Sussex contribute two excel- 

 lent terrier-surveys of Battle Abbey manors made in the early 

 years of Henry VI. Like the Glastonbury series, they describe 

 each open-field parcel, and the number of these has been indi- 

 cated in parentheses in the brief summaries given in Appendix I. 

 The small manor of Ansty lay in northeastern Hampshire, and 

 its fields bore the conventional names of South, Middle, and 

 East. The holdings were not estimated by virgates, but nearly 

 every one, except those held at the will of the lord, had its mes- 

 suage or toft. A few were small, but even these contained an acre 

 or more in each field. It is in two or three of the larger holdings 

 that some unequal distribution appears, an inequality which, so 

 far as we can see, was not compensated for by the possession of en- 

 closed arable. Such occasional deviations from the general prac- 

 tice should not be taken as evidence that a township did not fall 

 within the three-field group. They remind us, rather, that de- 

 scriptions of several holdings are often needed to give assurance in 

 these matters. 



The Sussex survey describes the manor of Alciston as it was 

 subdivided into " borga," a term apparently implying distinct 

 townships. Two of the borga were Blatchington and Alfriston, 

 alike in their field arrangements, of which the descriptions of a 

 half-dozen copyholds and two demesne leaseholds at Alfriston 

 are illustrative. In these we are introduced to a new terminology. 

 Instead of virgates we meet with *' wistae," instead of fields with 

 " leynes." Both terms were peculiar to Sussex and occur often 

 in the Battle cartulary. Each wista contained about eighteen 

 acres, and the assignment of its acre and half-acre strips to the 

 three leynes. North, Middle, and South, was on the principle of 



