84 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



cultivated as were the existent two and three fields? To answer 

 this question an examination of sixteenth-century descriptions 

 is essential; and, since such an examination may perhaps best be 

 undertaken before the more numerous documents from the 

 river valleys receive attention, extracts from surveys of forest 

 townships have been summarized first in Appendix III.' 



In Oxfordshire, just on the other side of Woodstock Park from 

 Handborough and Bladon, both excellent examples of three-field 

 arrangements, lie three other townships whose field irregularities 

 at the end of the sixteenth century were noteworthy. All five 

 were members of Woodstock manor. Of the three, Stonesfield was 

 least enclosed, and here were to be found three fields apart from 

 " Gannett's Sarte," which contained only freehold. While 

 Church field and Callowe contributed a few acres to most copy- 

 holds, the comprehensive arable area was Home field. This, 

 although of little importance to the freeholders, usually comprised 

 three-fourths or more of the acres of the customary tenants. Such 

 an arrangement was, of course, very unlike the normal one and 

 suggests that the first arable to be improved was occupied as a 

 single field. To this, it would seem, two small additions had in 

 time been made for copyholders and one for freeholders. Yet 

 the preeminence of Home field had never been challenged. 



Almost as free from enclosure as Stonesfield was Wootton, 

 where the arable lay in North field and West field, both at times 

 called " ends." In only one instance was the virgate holding of 

 a customary tenant divided between them, and this was because 

 two copyholds happened to be in one man's hands. A free 

 tenant, too, had seven acres in West field, one and one-half 

 acres in North field. Each remaining holding was confined to one 

 or the other of the two fields. Wootton was thus, like Stones- 

 field, so far as the customary tenements were concerned, a 

 township of a single field. 



The third member of this group. Long Coombe, had its copy- 

 holds considerably enclosed by 4 James I. Though the acres of 

 a large group of " liberi tenentes per copiam " lay more often 



^ All the surveys cited in this chapter are there in part tabulated, the order of 

 their citation being observed. 



