LATER HISTORY OF THE MIDLAND SYSTEM 1 37 



bodied in the practice of convertible husbandry upon enclosed 

 lands. 



To the adoption of these principles they speedily came as soon 

 as parliamentary enclosure offered facilities. For among other 

 things which the Oxfordshire evidence has illustrated is the cir- 

 cumstance that townships which had four or more fields were 

 the most prompt to get enclosure awards passed. By the end 

 of the eighteenth century there was little open field left in the 

 northwestern part of the county. Not so, however, with the 

 region southeast of Oxford. In this stronghold of three fields 

 enclosure was long delayed. Whether throughout midland Eng- 

 land in general the three-field system acted similarly as a pro- 

 tective shell for the preservation of open-field arable cannot be 

 determined without further investigation.^ 



Our study of Oxfordshire, which may end here, should have 

 served to illustrate various aspects of the decay of the two- and 

 three-field system. As to those townships of the county whose en- 

 closure antedated parliamentary activity, a perception that most 

 of them were situated in forest areas or along streams, or were 

 desirable as residential estates, will perhaps serve to explain con- 

 siderable early enclosing activity. Further, the achievement of 

 this step by voluntary agreement has been instanced in order to 

 indicate the legal methods first employed. In the case of 

 townships enclosed by act of parliament, the awards have 

 enabled us to discover what fraction of the county still re- 

 mained open arable field up to the time when this finally dis- 

 appeared. The awards, too, assisted by glebe terriers, have 

 disclosed what transformations the two- and three-field system 

 had undergone since the days of its earlier simpHcity. Only in 

 one part of the county, it appears, and that the section given over 



^ To judge from the dates of the acts for enclosure, certain of the old two-field 

 counties — Lincolnshire, Gloucestershire, Warwickshire — were prompt to avail 

 themselves of the new facilities, while ancient three-field counties, like Bedford- 

 shire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, long remained indifferent. But there 

 are enough apparent exceptions to make one hesitate to generalize. Hampshire, 

 Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire, all three-field counties, inclined early 

 to parliamentary enclosure, while Berkshire, once two-field, showed no haste. Cf. 

 Slater, English Peasantry, Appendix. 



