THE KENTISH SYSTEM 297 



one approach to the aspect of the midland system do Kentish 

 postulates allow. If in the case of the arable co-heirs or co- 

 tenants at times devised some system of cooperative ploughing, 

 there may have arisen within a iugum something resembling a 

 midland furlong. But such a furlong did not combine with other 

 similar ones to form two or three large fields. 



With the key to Kentish field arrangements above given, the 

 interpretation of early charters becomes simple. The scattering 

 of parcels is explicable; it was, indeed, normal. The multiplicity 

 of names arises from a reference not only to the field divisions of 

 one iugum, but in all probability to those of two or three iuga. 

 The varying areas of the parcels are appropriate to Kent as they 

 would not be to the midlands, and the small size of most of them 

 was a natural outcome of more or less frequent subdivision. 

 Parcels might or might not assume the appearance of arable 

 strips, according to the tenants' attitude toward cooperative 

 ploughing. Apparently they did practice this on the down-lands 

 of the southeast. In general, then, a fourteenth- or fifteenth- 

 century map would show the parcels of a holding as a network of 

 non-contiguous plats or strips often considerably segregated in 

 one part of the township's area. In its primary methods and 

 results the Kentish system was not unlike the Scottish or the 

 Irish; transmission to co-heirs or co-tenants wrought similar 

 effects in each case. The difference lay in the original units. In 

 the Celtic countries it was the entire township which was first 

 subjected to subdivision; in Kent, it was the smaller iugum or 

 dola. 



No conjecture has yet been hazarded as to when the iugum or 

 dola was in the hands of the tenant with whose name it came to 

 be connected. Since iuga are Domesday units, they must have 

 antedated the Conquest. Yet most of the names which they bear 

 are later. At Gillingham the personal names Fissher, Hood, 

 Pilgrym, have no flavor of antiquity. At Wye, in the earHest 

 rental, many of the fist seem to be from Norman England. Such 

 are Gilbertus de Wythereston, Willielmus de Pirye, Roger et 

 JuUana de Rengesdon, Radulphus molendinarius, Richardus 

 Besant, and many others. A few names, however, suggest 



