276 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



Full detail for all tenants' holdings is given in the survey of 

 the manor of Dale, or Court Ashe, in the parish of Deal.' These 

 lay almost entirely in open field. The first tenant had 56I acres 

 in 23 parcels lying in 16 fields,- the second 18 acres in 20 parcels 

 in 13 fields, the fourth 25^ acres in 18 parcels in 14 fields, and so 

 on. T)pical among the field names were Scotten Tyght, Le 

 Chequer, Long Tyght, Woo furlong, West furlong super le Downe, 

 Kectwheet, Goldfrid, and Upland. 



In the neighboring township of Sutton, the archbishop of 

 Canterbury's land consisted both of parcels in enclosed fields 

 King among other men's lands and of parcels in open fields. 

 The open fields were named Pising field. Barley Downe, Chequer 

 end, the Butts, the North end, and the East hill. In them 

 rent-paying tenants also had parcels.^ 



These four parishes, St. Margaret, Guston, Deal, and Sutton, 

 all lie in the high down-lands of southeastern Kent, downs which 

 today are still largely open. The surveys are relatively late, 

 dating from the early seventeenth century. An apparently 

 reasonable inference, then, would be that we are here dealing with 

 stretches of common land somewhat recently improved and distrib- 

 uted with an attempt at equity among the several tenants. Yet 

 why subdivide so minutely and separate so persistently ? The 

 glebe in Limvine furlong at St. Margaret might as well have 

 been one four-acre parcel as four smaller ones, and an eighteenth- 

 century division of a common would have made it such. The 

 actual situation in the survey bespeaks the type of mind which 

 subdivided the fields of the midlands, and suggests that the ar- 

 rangement in Kent was not altogether recent when the surveys 

 were made. 



This inference is not without the support of earlier documents. 

 In 4 Richard II, Thomas Menesse of Dale (in the parish of Deal) 

 granted land as follows: — 



In Dale: " una roda terre iacet in campo vocato longetheghe 

 tres rode iacent in loco vocato Dodeham 



1 Exch. K. R., M. B. 40, ff. 8-1 1, 14 Jas. I. 



^ One parcel contained 18 acres, one 55; the others were small. 



' Exch. K. R., M. B. 40, flF. 1-2 (1616). 



