62 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



than " meadow. It must have been arable. The arable acres 

 must further have been intermixed, else the cattle, once through 

 the hedge, could not have ranged over all of them. Common 

 intermixed arable acres in England are therefore discernible at 

 the end of the seventh century. The law assures us of their 

 existence two centuries before the charters give testimony. 



In another respect the law agrees with the charters. Both lo- 

 cate the early arable open field in the western and southern mid- 

 lands. The counties to which the charters refer were (with the 

 possible exception of Northamptonshire) of West Saxon origin.^ 

 That the laws of Ine were applicable to the same territory at 

 the end of the ninth century is shown by Alfred's recension of 

 them. Wessex and the southern edge of Mercia were thus the 

 regions within which we see arable open field pretty clearly at the 

 end of the seventh century and quite unmistakably in the tenth. 



Apart from their implications regarding the existence of com- 

 mon arable fields, our earliest sources tell us little. No reference 

 to a three-field township is vouchsafed, and only twice (in the 

 tenth century-) is there probable reference to a two-field township. 

 But meagre as is the contribution of Anglo-Saxon documents to 

 our knowledge of field systems, that of the first Norman century 

 is not more ample, and we may pass at once to the times of 

 Richard and John. 



Only with the definite evidence of the late twelfth and of the 

 thirteenth century do we first come upon townships whose arable 

 fields were clearly two or three. Since both sorts were then 

 reasonably numerous, it is at length possible to ascertain the area 

 throughout which the two- and three-field system prevailed in 

 mediaeval England. Later testimony fills in doubtful stretches 

 of the boundary, until by the sixteenth century the circuit can be 

 pretty well determined. From the available data which have 

 been collected in Appendix II its reconstruction may now be 

 attempted.^ 



In the north the county of Northumberland must for the time 

 be excluded. The three fields which some documents seem to 



^ Chadwick, Origin of the English Nation, pp. 3, 5, map facing p. 11. 

 ^ The result is shown on the map facing the title-page. 



