92 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



neighbourhood of Glocestcr are some extensive common fields 

 . . . croppved, year after year, during a century, or perhaps cen- 

 turies; without one intervening whole year's fallow. Hence they 

 are called ' Every Year's Land.' On these lands no regular 

 succession of crops is observed; except that ' a brown and a white 

 crop' — pulse and corn — are cultivated in alternacy. The in- 

 closed arable lands are under a similar course of management."^ 



Tillage of this kind, characterized by absence of fallowing and by 

 a varying succession of crops, would go far, if it were practiced 

 two centuries before Marshall's time, to explain irregularities in 

 field systems. Nor is such early practice improbable. Mar- 

 shall conjectures that the usage was ancient; and the proximity 

 of tow^nships which the tenants themselves had seen fit to enclose, 

 such as Frampton Cotterell, argues that there was abroad a spirit 

 of innovation and a desire so to cultivate fertile land as to get 

 from it the most ample return. 



Pertinent evidence regarding irregularities in Gloucestershire 

 tillage as early as the thirteenth century has been pointed out 

 by Vinogradoff.^ It relates to a custom known as making an 

 " inhoc " {inhoc facere) . This consisted in enclosing for a year's 

 cultivation a part of the arable fallow which would in the normal 

 course of tillage have lain uncultivated. The anonymous author 

 of a treatise on husbandry written before the end of the thir- 

 teenth century knew the custom well.^ It was the exaction of an 

 added crop from the soil, a demand which could not at that time 

 be made too often. In the instance which Vinogradofif cites, it 

 was thought possible to enclose (inhocare) every second year 40 

 acres out of 174 which were tilled under a three-course rotation.'* 

 In other words, from the 58 acres which would normally each 

 year have lain fallow, 20 were put under contribution for an extra 



1 William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire, including its Dairy 

 (2 vols., Gloucester, 1789), i. 17, 65-66. 



^ Villainage in England, pp. 226-227. 



' " E si Uad inhom il deit ver quele coture il [the provost of the manor] prent 

 en le inhom & de quel ble il seme chescune coture. ..." {Walter of Henley's 

 Husbandry, together with an Anonymous Husbandry, etc., ed. E. Lamond, 1890, 

 p. 66). 



* Historia el Cartularium Monasterii S. Petri Gloucestriae (ed. W. H. Hart, Rolls 

 Series, 3 vols., 1863-67), iii. 35. 



