LATER HISTORY OF THE MIDLAND SYSTEM I3I 



early enclosure. Elsewhere in the north the complex fields and 

 the four-course rotation with which we have become familiar 

 suggest a similar explanation of the relatively early dates which 

 characterize the enclosure awards of this region.^ 



Having discovered that by the later eighteenth century many 

 Oxfordshire townships of the northwest had discarded the two- 

 field husbandry once practiced there, we are led to inquire what 

 period is responsible for this improvement. Such a query in- 

 volves a consideration of seventeenth-century field arrangements. 

 Of these we have, fortunately, a contemporary account which, 

 if not a model of style, is yet instructive. In Robert Plot's 

 Natural History of Oxfordshire, published in 1677, one chapter 

 treats of the tillage employed on the various soils of the county. 

 Before quoting this, however, it will be helpful to note the 

 characteristics and boundaries of the soils themselves. 



Arthur Young's description is best.^ According to him, the 

 fertile " redland " of the northern townships near Banbury is 

 one of the best soils of the midlands. It extends over the wedge- 

 shaped area that protrudes between Warwickshire and North- 

 amptonshire, and constitutes about one-sixth of the entire county. 

 South of it there stretches from the Cotswolds eastward to 

 Buckinghamshire a broad belt of less desirable soil, for the most 

 part a Hmestone and known as " stonebrach." Its southern 

 boundary runs from Witney to Bicester, and it comprises a third 

 of the county. South of this again is a belt of miscellaneous 

 loams including the valleys of the Thames, the lower Cherwell, 

 and the Thame. This constitutes another third of the county, 

 reaching to the Ghilterns on the southeast. The latter, one-sixth 

 of the county, have a chalky soil, not ill adapted to certain crops. 



Following these divisions, which he too recognizes. Plot begins 

 his description with an account of the tillage of clay soils, most 

 numerous in the north. It will be seen that he has primarily 

 in mind a four-course rotation of crops, precisely that described 

 by Young one hundred and thirty years later: — 



" And first of Clay, Which if kind for Wheat, as most of it is, 

 hath its first tillage about the beginning of May; or as soon as 



1 Cf. Appendix IV. ^ AgriculHtre^ of Oxfordshire, p. 3. 



