96 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



per copiam . . . Elizabethe iv, unam acram terre custumarie 

 dc Sokcland iaccntcm in Fromanton ... in campo ibidem 

 vocato Nashill nuper Willelmi Cooke 



per copiam . . . Philipi ii et Marie iii, unam acram in Froman- 

 ton in quodam loco vocato Odyche nupcr Jacobi Greene, 

 patris sui." ' 



During the second half of the sixteenth century Richard Grene 

 is thus seen acquiring ten and one-half acres through no fewer than 

 ten different grants by copy. Starting in the time of Philip and 

 Mary with an acre which had been his father's, he had added par- 

 cel after parcel up to the last years of Elizabeth's reign, some 

 acquisitions being customary sokeland, others simple copyhold. 

 These parcels had formerly been in the possession of six tenants, 

 many of whose other acres had also passed out of their hands.^ 

 Obviously such an agglomerate holding as this of Grene's can 

 instruct us little about the original field system of the townships 

 of the manor, but the bare fact that such tenements were in 

 process of formation proves that the rules of three-field tillage 

 can scarcely have been observed at the end of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury. Grene had, to be sure, taken pains to acquire parcels in 

 the three fields which are assigned to Fromanton. Yet there 

 were years when he did not possess them all, and one of these 

 fields (Holbach) was not restricted to Fromanton, since Venne 

 also had interests in it. Grene, further, did not hesitate to 

 acquire two acres in Lake field, which the enclosure map shows 

 to have been at some distance and which was probably not one 

 of the fields of Fromanton.^ Shifting arrangements of this sort 

 cannot well have been the concomitant of a systematic three- 

 field system. 



Another Marden illustration emphasizes what has been said 

 above, and in addition reveals clearly the natural outcome of 

 unstable tenements and a decadent field system. John Car- 

 wardyn held by four copies lands which had once been John 

 Heere's, Richard Heere's, and (for the most part) Richard 



1 Land Rev., M. B. 217, f. 211. 



^ As is shown in the descriptions of various holdings. 



' Cf. the sketch of the enclosure map of Marden, p. 147, below. 



