CELTIC SYSTEM IN ENGLAND 243 



A concrete illustration of the early prevalence of enclosures 

 is at hand in a detailed survey of the large manor of Rochdale, 

 made in 1626.^ This estate, situated in the southeastern part 

 of the county, included some twenty-four hamlets and had an 

 area of 41,828 acres. Somewhat more than one-fourth of the 

 manor remained in open common waste at the time of the sur- 

 vey, but the remainder lay almost entirely in closes. At times 

 there were parcels of pasture which, being newly divided, were 

 not yet enclosed.^ Intermixed arable strips were nowhere to be 

 found. Thus, to a large tract of land on the edge of the moors 

 — a tract which may never, to be sure, have had much open- 

 field arable — the eighteenth-century description was applicable 

 a hundred and fifty years earlier. 



There is, however, no difficulty in finding traces of open 

 common arable in the seventeenth century. The rental of the 

 houses and lands of Edward Moore at Liverpool, drawn up in 

 1667-68 and unconsciously offering a striking comment on the 

 later development of that port, frequently attaches to the houses 

 "several lands [e.g., ten] in the field." Elsewhere it is the 

 " town field," but we get no further detail.^ 



An instructive document illustrative of early seventeenth- 

 century conditions in Lancashire is an account, drawn up in 

 1616, of the " Appropriate Parsonages or Rectories of Black- 

 bourne and Whaley . . . possessions and Heriditaments belonging 

 to the Archbishopricke of Canterburie." * Since there belonged 

 " unto the said Rectory the Moietie of the Lordship of Black- 

 bourne," the townships included in the enumeration extended 

 over an area of at least 200 square miles in the northeastern 

 part of the county.^ With one exception the land described in 



^ Henry Fishwick, Survey of the Manor 0} Rochdale (Chetham Soc, 1913), pp. 

 xiii, XV. 



^ Ibid., 240, Whitworth hamlet: " A parcel of pasture . . . lying open 

 amongst the rest of the Copyholders in the Trough containing statute [measure], 

 10 acres, 3 roods." Areas held by other copyholders " in the Trough " are given. 



^ Thomas Hejnyood, The Moore Rental (Chetham Soc, 1847), pp. 19, 23, et 

 passim. 



* Exch. K. R., M. B. 40, ff. 24-46. 



* The townships were Samelsbury, Overdale, Walton, Downham, Church, Has- 

 lingden, Burnley, Colne, Clitheroe, besides Blackburn and Whalley. 



