I 1 4 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



12.6 per cent of the county, the arable or meadow affected was 

 between one-fourth and one-half of the respective areas. In i6 

 townships the fraction sank to less than one-fourth, the town- 

 ships themselves amounting to 7.55 per cent of the county. For 

 28.75 P^'' c^'^^ of Oxfordshire there is no record of parliamentary 

 enclosure. The townships that fall within the respective groups 

 are indicated on the accompanying plan. (See next page.) 



Stated more synthetically, the total amount of open-field arable 

 which the tables show to have been enclosed by act of parliament 

 was 193,781 acres, or 40.53 per cent of the entire county. These 

 figures somewhat overestimate the actual amount, since, as has 

 been noticed, the character of the awards has at times made it 

 impossible to separate arable from waste. Probably the above 

 percentage should be reduced to about 37 per cent. The differ- 

 ence should be added to the percentage which represents the 

 unimproved waste, and which our tables, most defective at this 

 point, show to have been at least 5.83 per cent of the county's 

 area (27,862 acres out of 478,112). Our estimate of the unim- 

 proved lands in the county in 1750 thus assigns to them about 9 

 per cent of its entire surface. 



After deducting the open-field arable and the unenclosed com- 

 mons, we are left with the old enclosures. According to the 

 estimates of the tables these amounted to 256,469 acres, or 53.61 

 per cent of the county. As was stated above, from townships 

 which represent 28.75 P^r cent of the county there is no record of 

 parKamentary action; the remaining old enclosed lands (24.86 

 per cent of the county's area) fall within townships some parts 

 of which were enclosed by award. These large percentages im- 

 ply, of course, that the enclosure history of the county prior to 

 1750 is a matter of no small moment. In what way these old 

 enclosures were brought about, what motives lay behind the proc- 

 ess, to what extent they represented simply an improvement in 

 agriculture, what relation they bore to field systems, — these are 

 subjects that now demand consideration. 



If we turn to those Oxfordshire townships which enclosed their 

 arable without parliamentary act, we shall be able to get some 

 hints, though not always very accurate information, as to how 



