226 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



from this negative testimony to the absence of a two-, three-, or 

 four-field system within the county, the nomenclature employed 

 relative to fields and the method of fallowing strongly suggest a 

 Scottish connection. Entirely Scottish was the temporary im- 

 provement of tracts of waste land, followed in turn by the aban- 

 donment of them to their original state. 



Scarcely have Celtic characteristics been discerned, however, 

 before Northumberland fields are seen to have been cultivated 

 in a manner which was not precisely that employed in Scotland 

 at the end of the eighteenth century. It is not clear, first of all, 

 that there was a permanent infield, and still lesg is it clear that 

 there was continuous tillage of any part of the arable which would 

 make possible such an infield. All cultivable land seems to have 

 been treated in the same manner — tilled, probably, under the 

 rotation of two crops and a fallow. At times a new furlong was 

 improved from the waste, subjected to the usual cultivation for 

 a series of years, and then allowed to revert to waste as another 

 furlong was substituted for it. In Scotland, give-and-take of 

 this sort was limited to the outfield; in Northumberland, it seems 

 to have been applicable to all lands which at any time were 

 brought under the plough. 



Another way in which a township of Northumberland differed 

 markedly from one of Scotland was in its size. The surveyor of 

 Long Houghton remarked upon " the greatnes of the said 

 towne "; ^ subsidy fists frequently point to the existence of a not 

 inconsiderable number of tenants; ^ sixteenth- and seventeenth- 

 century plans usually show a single large settlement within a 

 large township area; ^ and, finally, the modern map reveals 

 Northumberland as a county of villages rather than one of ham- 

 lets. In Scotland, on the other hand, the townships, as we have 

 seen, were usually small and the settlements in general had 

 not a half-dozen houses. Northumberland, so far as concerns 

 the area of its townships, was allied with the English midlands 

 rather than with its northern neighbor. 



^ Cf. above, p. 208. 



* See, for example, History of Northumberland, ii. 236, 365, 414, 472. 



' For example, ibid., 368, 413, 452. 



