198 EXGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



far there had been subdivision of the original lectum. Thence- 

 forth these units allotted to the grandsons of Lauwarghe did not 

 undergo formal subdivision. Yet each was by no means trans- 

 mitted to a single heir; one of them might come to be held by as 

 many as thirteen co-tenants. For the most part, each group of 

 co-tenants, to judge from the names of its members, was de- 

 scended from one of the grandsons of Lauwarghe, but for the 

 future its bond of union was its joint responsibility for the rents 

 and services due from the gavella which it now held " integre." 

 In this manner did co-tenancy arise. 



Thus by somewhat devious ways the custom pf transmitting a 

 holding to co-heirs has been followed from Scotland and Ireland 

 in the eighteenth century to Wales in the fourteenth. It is, as 

 Seebohm has shown,' a usage apparent in early Celtic law, and 

 from primitive times can scarcely have failed to influence the 

 field system of a hamlet. The subdivision that went on in the 

 Donegal township during two nineteenth-century generations had 

 without doubt often occurred at an earlier time in Ireland, in Scot- 

 land, and in Wales. Probably the early usage was to make the 

 allotments for a year only; such a custom, as we have seen, was 

 still observed in Scotland as late as the eighteenth century. In 

 Wales, however, permanent allotments may have taken place 

 before the sixteenth century, since Owen, describing Pembroke- 

 shire, declared that the extreme subdivision of the lands of the 

 Welsh in that county was due to the custom of transmission by 

 gavelkind, a custom itself made illegal by a statute of Henry 

 VIII.2 



Whatever may have been the time when the subdivision among 

 co-tenants came to be made for periods longer than a year, there 

 is little doubt about the manner in which it took place. Each 

 heir, the Irish account declares, demanded a portion of all quali- 

 ties of land within the townland. As a result, small scattered 

 parcels became the constituents of each allotment or holding. 

 Certain of these parcels were of course arable, and so far as this 

 was the case it was more or less necessary that the tenants should 

 share in the ploughing; seldom can one of the co-heirs have had 



1 English Village Community, pp. 193-194. ^ Cf. above, p. 187. 



