204 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



or an unbroken succession of three crops of spring corn upon land 

 manured once every three years; finally, the tenants' parcels 

 were not divided between two or three large arable fields, and 

 there is no evidence that fields of this sort ever existed. 



The influence of such a system in England is not altogether 

 easy to trace in the documents at hand. One of its four charac- 

 teristics will be of little assistance. The continued subdivision of 

 holdings, farms, or townlands among co-heirs or co-tenants, per- 

 haps the most striking feature of runrig, is only occasionally 

 perceptible in western England. In general it seems to have 

 given way before the more rigid requirements of the English 

 manorial system, which preferred that the rent of a holding 

 should be paid by relatively few tenants. Nor have we many 

 instances to show that the English counties which bordered Scot- 

 land or Wales favored a rotation of crops different from that 

 which prevailed in the English midlands. In this matter, too, 

 non-Celtic influences were early dominant. 



The smaller size of Celtic townships is a feature which is re- 

 flected in several English counties. Useful as it is, however, 

 in tracing Celtic influence, it yields in utility to the last of the 

 four characteristics, the arrangement of tenants' parcels in the 

 arable fields. Where Celtic influence was felt, the parcels, we shall 

 find, were closes, or irregular plats, or arable strips in runrig. 

 Closes or plats may be expected to predominate in regions situ- 

 ated near Wales and seemingly devoted early to pasturage; 

 arable and the attendant runrig may be expected on the Scottish 

 border. In no instance will there be a division of the arable into 

 two or three large fields with a distribution of the parcels of hold- 

 ings between them. Evidence on this point, so far as the terriers 

 are concerned, will be largely negative. Only rarely will a 

 terrier so clearly locate the strips of a bovate or a virgate as to 

 render it probable that these strips were closely grouped within 

 one part of the arable area of a township and hence not amenable 

 to distribution throughout fields.^ Elsewhere we shall have to 

 be content with such negative testimony as results from the 

 omission, in all available descriptions, of those field divisions 



1 Cf. below, pp. 208-210, 235-237, 245. 



