LATER HISTORY OF THE MIDLAND SYSTEM I 35 



West, North and South. All were in the north and west of the 

 county. In them the abandonment of two-field agriculture 

 seems to have occurred between the period of the terriers and 

 that of the awards, since only Kencott is known to have retained 

 its two fields until 1767. Three were enclosed without act of 

 parHament, we know not how.^ For several the parhamentary 

 awards give no field detail, most of them being of early date.^ 

 In three instances, however, we discover from the awards that the 

 old two fields of the terriers had disintegrated before enclosure. 

 At Asthall the plan of 18 14 bears the names of many small fields, 

 six at least; at Duns Tew in 1794 there were six quarters; at 

 Tackley the references in 1773 are to furlongs and quarters only. 

 Had the awards which contain no field detail been as specific as 

 these three, they would probably have disclosed a similar situa- 

 tion, and have made it quite clear that the definite abandonment 

 of the primitive agriculture by even the least enterprising of two- 

 field townships occurred between the middle of the seventeenth 

 century and the middle of the eighteenth. 



Several glebe terriers, of course, picture the continuance of the 

 three-field system, the point of interest here being the location of 

 the townships. All are near Oxford, mainly to the east, but 

 partly to the west near the Thames, the region which we have 

 already seen characterized by three fields in the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. It was not there that agricultural advance was to be 

 expected. 



For evidence of such progress we turn to eight of the terriers 

 dated about 1680.^ In them the division of the arable into four 

 quarters, later to become so frequent, is already apparent, and 

 they illustrate the four-field arrangements which Plot, writing in 

 1677, had in mind. All are from the northern part of the county.^ 

 Certain other terriers for townships of the northwest have not 

 this neat quadripartite division of the glebe, but in them also 



1 Ardley, Broughton Poggs, Glympton. The enclosure of Middleton Stony has 

 been explained from the glebe terriers themselves (see p. 117). 



2 Alkerton (1777), Alvescot (1797), Steeple Aston (1767), Brize Norton (1776), 

 Cottisford (1854), West Shutford (1766), Westwell (1778)- 



3 Cf. Appendix II, pp. 493-494. 



* The case of Kingham has already been cited and illustrated (above, p. 126). 



