296 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



Four stages in the history of the iuga at Wye thus emerge. 

 At a date still undetermined each iugum or half-iugum was 

 attributable to a single tenant, who either gave it his name or, if 

 it already bore a topographical designation, possibly took his 

 name from it. By the end of the thirteenth century it had passed 

 to his heirs, who held it as a group of co-tenants. In the first half 

 of the next century these heirs were distinguished from another 

 group of tenants who held for (pro) them, but whose members 

 had to only a slight extent the same surnames as the group of 

 heirs. By the fifteenth century one group of tenants alone re- 

 mained, and their names have scarcely any connection with the 

 names once traditional in the iugum. To how small a degree 

 the interests of these last tenants were bound up with the iugum 

 is shown by their acquisition of parcels in other iuga as well. The 

 history of the iugum was therefore one of continuous subdivision 

 and reapportionment, largely due to the practice of transmitting 

 landed property to groups of heirs, who in turn at times sub- 

 let it. 



The effect of such a history upon the appearance of the iugum 

 can be conjectured. Division among co-heirs probably involved 

 giving to each his share of the several qualities of land within 

 the iugum. In the fifteenth century the half-iugum Ammyng 

 gave no names to its parcels, but grouped them as " terra optimii 

 precii, terra medii precii, et pastura." ' Since allotments of 

 different quality must frequently have been non-contiguous, the 

 tenants of a subdivided iugum would find their holdings consist- 

 ing of scattered parcels. But neither in this condition nor as a 

 compact block before subdivision can the iugum have been fitted 

 into the framework of the midland system. Had the arable of 

 the township been divided into two or three large fields, the 

 iugum as a compact area would in a particular year have been 

 either entirely fallow or entirely sown. That fifteenth- or even 

 thirteenth-century Kentish holdings consisted of scattered parcels 

 does not, therefore, imply midland husbandry. One must re- 

 member, too, that the parcels of the iugum might be meadow or 

 pasture as well as arable, they might be open or enclosed. Only 



^ Cf. p. 292, above. 



