LATER HISTORY OF THE MIDLAND SYSTEM III 



affected.^ Since many acts neglect to give even the approximate 

 areas to be enclosed, his presentation could not attain to any 

 considerable accuracy.^ This defect can be remedied only by 

 an appeal to the awards, a toilsome undertaking upon which no 

 one has yet ventured. Until it is attempted we shall have to 

 accept Slater's results. For the counties of Oxford and Here- 

 ford, however, it has here seemed best to consult all accessible 

 awards, in order that the disappearance of the midland system 

 within limited areas may be described as accurately as possible. 

 This chapter, therefore, stands to Slater's lists and maps for these 

 two counties as the awards do to the acts. It forms a comple- 

 tion of the sketch. 



The awards, ponderous as they are, do not always supply such 

 exact information as is desirable, since their form and content 

 varied considerably during the century which saw their prepara- 

 tion. The early ones are relatively brief and uninforming, telling 

 very little about the open fields which they enclosed save, at times, 

 the number of virgates and the total areas. Only toward 1800 

 did it become usual in Oxfordshire to refer to the ancient field 

 divisions in locating new allotments, and in many instances this 

 was then done cursorily in the text, without notice of the old sub- 

 divisions on the plan. Again, a large allotment was often assigned 

 to several field areas without specification of how much belonged 

 to each. Under these circumstances it frequently becomes diffi- 

 cult to tell exactly what was the size and what the arrangement 

 of the old fields. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century 

 the plans accompanying the awards, though large and detailed 



1 English Peasantry, Appendix and maps. 



2 Two shortcomings are most noticeable. One, in the appendix, is due primarily 

 to the neglect of the acts to state the areas to be enclosed. The phraseology of the 

 acts, further, is often such that it is impossible to discriminate between arable field 

 and common waste, while the Norfolk acts are deceptive in still another way 

 (cf. p. 305). The second shortcoming appears in the maps, where no attempt is 

 made to distinguish between townships in which there was a large amount of arable 

 field remaining open until parliamentary enclosure and those in which there was 

 little. Townships in which there was any enclosure of arable whatever appear 

 as do those in which there was much. It is questionable whether discrimination in 

 this matter would not have been more acceptable in the maps than are the dis- 

 tinctions by periods which the author has preferred to indicate. 



