56 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



insisted upon by Secbohm and Vinogradoff, there seems to be no 

 reason for supposing that in the boundaries it meant anything 

 more than hillside. Such has been and is its usual connotation. 

 Seebohm explains that terraces of hillside arable strips were in 

 the nineteenth century called " lynches "; ^ but the term seems 

 seldom to have had this significance in sixteenth-century surveys 

 or in earlier field documents.^ Its application to the terraces is 

 probably late, and due to an extension of the original meaning. 

 Among the phrases of the boundaries, therefore, that which most 

 clearly refers to open fields is heafodaecer, and the first appearance 

 of this is in the tenth century. 



Apart from occasional open-field words which by chance crept 

 into the boundaries, the charters contain a few specific references 

 to the open-field system. Nasse first cited four of them, all in 

 tenth-century grants to Abingdon' monastery, and still among 

 our best bits of evidence.^ Seebohm added one reference,^ Vino- 

 gradoff three, ^ and Maitland four, two of them credible and two 

 doubtful.'^ Ten of these citations, together with nine others, 

 may now be given as embodying the most convincing evidence 

 which the charters of the Anglo-Saxon period proffer regarding 

 open-field conditions : — 



1 Op. cit., p. 5. 



- The Hertfordshire instance cited below on (p. 377, n. 2) is unusual. 



' Op. cit., pp. 22, 24. In the following list the four are nos. 1169, 1234, 1240, 

 1278, in Kemble's Codex. 



* Op. cit., p. 112, n. {Cod. Dip., 1213). 



^ English Society, pp. 259, 277, 279 {Cod. Dip., 793, 503; Carll. Sax., 1130). 



^ Domesday Book, pp. 365-366. The credible ones are here given: Cod. Dip., 

 339, 586. The doubtful ones are from Kent and have not the characteristics of 

 two- or three-field grants: ibid., 241 {an. 839), 259 {an. 845). Of the latter the 

 first refers to " xxiiii iugeras ... in duabus locis in Dorovernia civitatis intua [intra] 

 muros civitatis x iugera cum viculis praedictis et in aquilone praedictae civitatis 

 xiiii iugera histis terminibus circumiacentibus. ..." The boundaries which 

 follow indicate that the fourteen acres formed a single parcel, while the ten acres 

 seem to have been within the walls. The other Kentish charter conveys " xviiii . . . 

 iugera hoc est vi iugera ubi nominatur et Uuihtbaldes hlawe et in australe parte 

 puplice strate altera vi et in australe occidentale que puplice strate ubi appellatur 

 Uueoweraget in confinioque Deoringlondes vii iugero. ..." The equal division 

 of acres here does indeed suggest a threefold plan, but the awkward location 

 of the three subdivisions with reference to highways rather than fields shows that 

 the arrangement was accidental. Kent, as we shall see, was one of the English 

 counties in which the three-field system did not come to prevail. 



