EARLY HISTORY OF TWO AND THREE FIELDS J I 



make restrictions. The considerable expanse of Lincolnshire in 

 the north remained alien to the three-field system; similarly, in 

 the west, Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire showed no 

 two-field affiliations. The subtractions from both areas nearly 

 balance each other and leave the midlands divided into two not 

 unequal parts. 



A patent conclusion to be drawn from this localization of two- 

 and three-field methods of tillage is that they were not expres- 

 sions of racial or tribal predilection. Any attempt to discern in 

 them usages peculiar to Saxons, Angles, or Danes meets at once 

 with grave difficulties. The three-field system preponderated to 

 the northeast of Watling Street. Yet if one should surmise that 

 this is attributable to tribal habits of Angles or Danes, he would 

 at once be reminded that many Lincolnshire townships (with 

 names ending in by) had two fields as clear-cut as any situated 

 on the Wessex downs. If, on the other hand, it be suggested 

 that two-field usages were native to the Saxons, the early three- 

 field townships of Hampshire and the three-field character of the 

 Sussex coastal plain are sufficient refutation. In reahty, what 

 determined the adoption of the one or the other form of tillage 

 was agricultural convenience, and this in turn depended largely 

 upon the locality and the nature of the soil. 



For it must be remembered that between these two modes of 

 husbandry the difference was not one of principle but one of pro- 

 portion. Under two-field arrangements there was left fallow each 

 year one-half of the arable, under three-field arrangements one- 

 third. The cultivated portion, whether one-half or two- thirds, 

 was sown in the same manner; it was divided between winter 

 and spring grains. Walter of Henley, writing in the thirteenth 

 century, makes this clear: " If your lands are divided in three, 

 one part for winter seed, the other part for spring seed, and the 

 third part fallow, then is a ploughland nine score acres. And if 

 your lands are divided in two, as in many places, the one half 

 sown with winter seed and spring seed, the other half fallow, then 

 shall a ploughland be eight score acres. "^ The distinction between 



1 Walter of Henley's Husbandry, together with an Anonymous Husbandry, etc. 

 (ed. E. Lamond, 1890), p. 7. 



