CELTIC SYSTEM IN ENGLAND 237 



alta via and the aqua de Eden. Every parcel in the list except 

 the last one and the three in Roclyfbank is thus described fully 

 enough to be brought either into immediate contact with the 

 alta via or the aqua de Eden, or into contact with some parcel 

 which touches upon one of them. The chain becomes continuous, 

 except for four parcels about which we are insufficiently informed 

 and which at best contain only one-sixth of the total area. Un- 

 less the entire open arable field of Warwick abutted upon the 

 alta via and the aqua de Eden, we may safely conclude that the 

 prior's acres lay segregated in one part of it. 



Early and late terriers thus concur in segregating to some 

 extent the parcels of a holding. Perhaps not too much should 

 be made of this feature, since we are not well informed of the 

 precise extent of the fields to which the foregoing terriers relate. 

 Yet one aspect of the subject seems clear, — the grouping of 

 strips which prevailed at Ainstable, Alenby, Hutton, and War- 

 wick was not consistent with a two- or three-field system. 

 Whether the parcels of arable were markedly segregated or not, 

 their distribution throughout two or three large fields is not at 

 all perceptible. 



One should formulate no conclusion, however, without giving 

 attention to earher testimony. Little of this is to be found in 

 the feet of fines, but a few instructive thirteenth-century terriers 

 are embedded in the cartularies of Holme Cultram, Wetheral, 

 and St. Bees.^ Noteworthy is the unanimity with which these 

 terriers locate their parcels by furlongs, without any attempt at 

 grouping them by fields. At Wetheral, for example, the 4 acres 

 that accompanied a house and croft consisted of nine such parcels, 

 and another grant of if acres refers the parcels to eight locali- 

 ties.2 Sometimes the specifications are full enough to show 

 that the localities were not after all remote from one another. 

 This was the case with 10 acres and 3 perches which St. Bees 

 acquired at Rotington.^ All parcels except the first lay adja- 



1 The cartulary of Lanercost priory I have not been able to examine. 



2 Prescott, Register of Wetherhal, pp. 136, 141. 



3 Harl. MS. 434, f. 169 (a late thirteenth-century cartulary). The specifica- 

 tions run as foUows: — 



" Due acre et dimidia iacent in meysigwra inter moram et campum quod vocatur Kenelflat 

 Item una acra que vocatur garebrad iacet iuxta terram que vocatur Kirkeland . . . 



