64 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



on the west and north: Cornwall, Devon, and western Somerset; 

 Wales with Monmouthshire; and the counties of the northwest, 

 Cheshire, Lancashire, western Yorkshire, Westmorland, Cum- 

 berland, and possibly Northumberland. Within the boundaries 

 thus drawn lay at least half the soil of England, and the coun- 

 ties comprised are for the most part known as the northern 

 and southern midlands. For brevity, therefore, and because 

 it is not altogether inappropriate, the term midland system will 

 often be employed henceforth in referring to two- and three-field 

 arrangements. 



There is one stretch of the boundary just indicated which is not 

 borne out by the citations of Appendix II. This is the link which 

 embraces the counties of Hereford and Shropshire. The early 

 evidence in support of the existence of a three-field system in 

 these counties is relatively so meagre that it seems best to set it 

 forth separately and in detail. It will be remembered that 

 testimony has already been adduced from Jacobean surveys to 

 show the presence of three-field townships in the two counties. 

 Especially at Stockton and its hamlets in northern Herefordshire 

 have three fields been discerned, and the Shropshire hamlets 

 bordering upon Claverley Holme and Warfield Holme appear 

 also to have had rather consistently three arable fields. But 

 little further sixteenth-century evidence is available, and, as we 

 shall see, there were many irregularities in Herefordshire fields 

 at that time.^ Still later, too, only three or four of all the 

 Herefordshire enclosure awards bespeak three fields.^ For these 

 reasons early evidence is the more to be desired. The system, if 

 existent, soon began to decline and can have been intact only in its 

 youthful days. What, then, say the early charters and extents ? 



The Herefordshire evidence is more slight than that from the 

 neighboring county. We have no difficulty in discovering that 

 a three-course rotation of crops was later in favor on demesne 

 lands, but the demesne in question probably did not lie in open 

 field.' An extent of Luston, a manor of Leominster priory, how- 



^ Cf. pp. 93 sq., below. 2 q{ pp 142-143, below. 



* The surveyors of the lands of the home manor of the abbey of Dore explain: 

 " And wher also some parte of the arable lands of the sayd demeain ... is not 



