EARLY IRREGULAR FIELDS IN THE MIDLANDS 87 



At Henley-in-Arden the Jacobean holdings were all small. 

 Some of the largest had a few arable acres in Back field, usually 

 less than ten, but with this the tale of unenclosed arable in 

 this township, brief at best, is practically complete.^ Leaving, 

 therefore, the forest of Arden we may follow the field irregular- 

 ities that appear to have characterized it into the wooded region 

 which is adjacent on the north. 



Much of the county of Stafford was probably in early days an 

 unimproved forested area. In the southeast, indeed, we have 

 found at RoUeston a normal six-field manor situated in the valley 

 of the Trent, but outside the Trent valley fields in the county 

 were hkely to be irregular. Though Wootton-under- Weaver was 

 not more than twenty miles north from Rolleston, its fields were 

 five, and the method of tiUing them is none too clearly discernible 

 in the survey of i Edward VI. One field was too small to stand 

 independently, but the attachment of it to any one of the other 

 four does not result very satisfactorily. Yet a four-field arrange- 

 ment is more credible than one of two or three fields, if indeed we 

 are to predicate any regularity whatever in the grouping. The 

 enclosures, which were few, explain nothing. 



At Rocester, a little farther north, the irregularity is obvious 

 and no concihatory grouping is possible. Areas, to be sure, are 

 usually given in " lands," but these cannot have differed greatly 

 in size. At best the open fields were small, containing less than 

 seventy-five acres in all, and the tenants at will who shared in 

 them had their " lands," it would seem, much as chance deter- 

 mined. 



At Over Arley in the southwestern part of the county, on the 

 borders of Wyre forest, most holdings appear enclosed in the 

 survey of 44 EHzabeth. Only seven tenants shared in the open 

 fields, the area of which was less than fifty acres, and parcels in 

 these fields were located in an even more incidental manner than 

 at Rocester.2 jj^ general, therefore, outside of the Trent valley 



1 Land Rev., M. B. 228, ff. 40-64. The survey is so simple that it has not been 

 summarized. 



^ Ibid., M. B. 185, S. 149-156. Two tenants had parcels in Stony field, two in 

 Great field, and five in Godfriesharne. 



