268 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



In view of the deceptive brevity of written documents, it is 

 best, unless in each instance it be possil)le to investigate the 

 stated areas, to take the less specific evidence which is furnished 

 by the modern map. From an examination of this we shall have 

 no hesitation in pronouncing that the counties examined in the 

 foregoing chapter, except Northumberland, were characterized 

 by the hamlet type of settlement. Indeed, we shall have to 

 include other counties as well, a circumstance that leads to a 

 further distinction. 



Although the hamlet was typical of Celtic settlement, its 

 appearance was not necessarily accompanied by a Celtic field 

 system. Two counties of the Welsh border, Herefordshire and 

 Shropshire, have already illustrated the divergence. On the map 

 they are dotted with tiny groups of houses, which, though often 

 bearing Enghsh names, are typical hamlets, while an analysis 

 of the parish of Harden has shown us several of these grouped 

 into a larger unit. Yet the tillage of Herefordshire and Shrop- 

 shire hamlet fields was similar to that of the midlands; and, 

 though irregularities soon arose in these fields and the decay of 

 the midland system occurred earlier than it did farther east, the 

 situation in the two counties assures us that hamlet settlements 

 with inconsiderable fields did not necessarily imply Celtic runrig. 



A second characteristic of the Celtic field system was its readi- 

 ness to subdivide holdings, farms, or townlands among co-heirs 

 or co-tenants in such a way that each received a share in every 

 quality of the soil and held his arable strips under a form of 

 intermixed occupancy known as runrig or rundale. In Scotland 

 and Ireland such subdivision continued throughout the eighteenth 

 century; in Wales the co-tenancy of the fourteenth century was 

 abandoned in the sixteenth. In northern and western England 

 little evidence is as yet available to demonstrate the prevalence 

 there of the transmission of land to co-heirs; scholars have merely 

 noted that the custom of certain sokes or manors in Shropshire, 

 Herefordshire, and Monmouthshire at a relatively late time pre- 

 scribed transmission by gavelkind.' Until further investigation 



1 T. Robinson, The Common Law of Kent, or the Customs of Gavelkind (5th ed., by 

 C. I. Elton and H. J. H. Mackay, London, 1897), p. ^s- 



