CELTIC SYSTEM IN ENGLAND 223 



feldes and territories of Cowpon aforesaide, everie so wasted and 

 layde oute corne felde nowe is and ever was reputed and used as 

 the quene's common wastes there are, until the same lately layde 

 oute corne feildes or any of them be by generall consente of 

 neighbours taken in, parted, and converted to arable lande or 

 medowe again; . . . [many tenants] affirme they alwayes so 

 had used and enjoyed the same parted landes tyme out of mynde 

 of man." ^ 



This description might well apply to the Scottish outfield, 

 described at length in the preceding chapter. In Northumber- 

 land, as in eighteenth-century Scotland, large parcels of land 

 were temporarily reclaimed from the waste, reduced to tillage 

 for a series of years, and then allowed to revert to waste again 

 until they had in a measure recovered their fertility. In a 

 newly-improved area each tenant had a share similar to that 

 which he had had in the " decayed corne feilde " simultaneously 

 " layde forth " or abandoned. Just how this procedure went 

 on is illustrated by the following provision of a Corbridge 

 court roU of 1594: ^^ Item it is agreed at this courte for the 

 devideinge of the land in Dawpathe, that betwen this and the 

 next fawghe it shalbe equallie parted by the consience of xii 

 men." ^ Apparently the re-allotment of a furlong about to be 

 brought once more under cultivation was entrusted to a com- 

 mittee of villagers. Such a method of tillage accounts for the 

 dispersion of a tenant's strips and explains the persistence of 

 such dispersion. 



Of immediate interest, however, is the probable relation of 

 this practice to a three-field arrangement. Unless the arable 

 area of a Northumberland township is to be thought of as en- 

 tirely surrounded by a tract of waste, the permanent division of 

 the arable into three equal compact parts is difficult to imagine 

 in connection with the type of cultivation just described. As- 

 sume, for instance, a three-field arrangement of the arable, with 

 the waste lying in one part of the township — an arrangement 

 usual in the midlands. Assume further that a furlong was to be 

 " decayed," or allowed to drop out of cultivation. If this furlong 



^ History of Northumberland, ix. 324. * Ibid., x. 270. 



