CHAPTER IV 



The Later History of the Midland System in 

 Oxfordshire and Herefordshire 



It was pointed out in the Introduction that agricultural progress 

 in England would ultimately demand the disappearance of the 

 open-field system. A form of tillage so inconvenient, so inflex- 

 ible, so negligent of the productivity of the soil, could not long 

 endure after technical improvement in ploughing had made pos- 

 sible its abandonment and after its social advantages had come 

 to be disregarded. 



This significant change, however, it is clear, was not likely 

 to take place suddenly, but improvements in the old system 

 would slowly lead up to it. The probable substitution of three- 

 field for two-field arrangements throughout a large part of the 

 midlands during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was 

 only a first step in this advance. Other and later innovations 

 have been disclosed in the preceding chapter. By the sixteenth 

 century, it appears, some townships had already hedged in a part 

 of their arable fields while leaving the remainder open, a piecemeal 

 method of enclosure which seems to have been a kind of experi- 

 ment undertaken by men who would not yet risk the complete 

 abandonment of open fields. Elsewhere innovation took the 

 form of a multiplicity of fields. To judge from the allotment of 

 tenants' acres among them, these numerous fields could not have 

 been tilled in accordance with two- or three-field arrangements, 

 and in them undoubtedly less arable was left fallow each year 

 than under the normal system. Still other townships remained 

 true to the principles of regularity, but subdivided their two 

 fields into four, of which three were tilled annually. All these 

 changes constitute a step in agricultural progress similar to that 

 which substituted three fields for two. Each in its way sought 

 the ultimate goal, a goal involving consoHdation of parcels, 



log 



