lOO EXGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



only a little, with such appendages as the Slade, the Breache, and 

 Eycberie. It was still possible for a tenant to have eleven acres 

 in one, ten in the other, while a small holding, like that of John 

 Polman might even lie largely in the open fields. Yet nearly 

 all copyholders had withdrawn from these fields much of their 

 arable. Departing, however, from the usual practice, they had 

 not converted this into pasture, of which little is described in the 

 survey. Yet it is probable that the '' arable " of the enclosures 

 was not without experience of convertible husbandry, and that the 

 copyholders did at times turn their fields into pasture for a year 

 or two. Pasture for sheep or cattle was the less necessary at 

 Curry Mallett since tenants had unstinted common in Sedge- 

 moore. 



It will be remembered that Somerset could still in Jacobean 

 days furnish a t>'pical two-field township. Such was South Stoke, 

 situated near Bath, and already described. Not a dozen miles 

 away, Corston had departed from the norm only a little farther. 

 Its two fields were North field and South field, between which 

 several of the holdings, and these large ones, divided their arable 

 evenly enough. Other tenements, however, manifested no equaHty 

 of division, having many more acres in North field than in South 

 field. Enclosure of a part of the South field may well have been 

 the cause of this, though we are not informed. At any rate, 

 there was in each of these holdings enough enclosed land to 

 redress the balance between the fields, if it may be assumed that 

 some of it had once been a part of them. 



One more Somersetshire illustration is pardonable, since it 

 shows the two old fields still existent, though moribund, so late 

 as 1684. The hill township of Bruton in the eastern part of the 

 county was once the seat of a priory. Some ten of the copy- 

 holders still in the seventeenth century had acres in North field 

 or South field, the totals being 25I and 19, with 4^ acres not 

 .located. The numerous lessees, holding for life or for 99 years, 

 had in addition 53 acres in North field, 13 in South field, with 47 

 acres elsewhere.^ Seldom was there such distribution of acres as 



^ There are two or three notes about parcels recently enclosed. 



