THE TWO- AND THREE-FIELD SYSTEM 4 1 



they henceforth be depended upon in either the earUer or the later 

 evidence to disprove the existence of two or three fields. In other 

 words, the fact that a half-dozen freeholds, or even all the free- 

 holds of a township, were not amenable to two- or three-field condi- 

 tions does not prove that this system was there in disfavor. On 

 the other hand, a single freehold which did divide its arable acres 

 equally between two or three fields is a satisfactory bit of evidence 

 in favor of the existence of the system. Such were the ancient 

 freeholds at Welford, and such was the glebe at Salford. Free- 

 holds, in short, have affirmative, not negative, value. The desir- 

 able tenures for our purpose are copyholds, or the leaseholds into 

 which they were sometimes transformed, as they probably were 

 at Welford and Ingleton. Henceforth, therefore, copyholds, 

 whenever available, will be cited in proof or disproof of the exist- 

 ence of the two- or three-field system. Freeholds will be reUed 

 upon only in default of other evidence or when their significance 

 is clear. 



The superior value of copyholds depends in part upon one of 

 their characteristics which leads in turn to a fourth useful test 

 in the interpretation of field systems. Copyholds were usually 

 rated in virgates or bovates, each of which was responsible for a 

 fixed quotum of rents and services. Probably to avoid inconven- 

 ience in the collection of rents and the exaction of services, the 

 virgates and bovates, except again in some eastern counties, re- 

 mained Httle changed for centuries. Division appears to have 

 been unusual after the thirteenth century, and consolidation is 

 first apparent in the sixteenth-century surveys. The virgate, 

 therefore, represented a holding of long standing, originally de- 

 signed to support a peasant family which could muster two oxen 

 for the plough. In Somerset such traditional holdings were some- 

 times called, instead of virgates, " de antiquo austro." ^ Al- 

 though the virgates differed in size from township to township, 

 within any particular one they were approximately equal in area, 

 as the foregoing surveys have often shown. For an investigation 

 of the early history of the two- and three-field system no frag- 

 mentary evidence is so valuable as the terrier of a virgate. It is 



* Survey of Kingsbury Episcopi, Land Rev., M. B. 202 flF., 199-253. 



