298 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



Saxon or Danish connections, and these are significant. There 

 was a "iugum Wlstani" and a "iugum Orgari"; at Newchurch 

 the dolae bore the names of Godewin, Mawger, and Storn. 

 Apparently iuga and dolae had once been in the hands of Saxons 

 or Danes but had been largely appropriated by victorious Nor- 

 mans, who thereupon affixed to them Norman names and trans- 

 mitted them by tenure of gavelkind. What we should like to 

 discover is whether, before the Conquest, the units had been thus 

 transmitted and whether therefore there had been several tenants 

 of a iugum or dola. To judge from nomenclature alone, one might 

 assume that there had not, that Wlstan, Orgar, Storn each held 

 an undivided tenement. But we know too little about the 

 transmission of socage holdings in pre-Norman days to maintain 

 that one son inherited to the exclusion of his brothers.^ The 

 individual Saxon name attached to each iugum or dola may have 

 been that of the head of a family group and the group may have 

 held the tenement collectively without formally dividing it — a 

 parcel of folk-land. We must thus be content with consigning 

 the Kentish iugum, as a compact rectangular area of from 25 to 

 60 acres, into the hands of a single Saxon or of a Saxon family, by 

 whom it was cultivated without thought of any two- or three- 

 field system. 



In order that the system may the better be traced outside the 

 borders of the county, a word should be added regarding other 

 Kentish units of land-holding. In the first place, the iugum 

 had its subdivisions, the fourth part having already made its 

 appearance at GilHngham under the name of " fer thing." At 

 Wye the same fraction was called a virgate, and a " virgatam 

 Throfte, vocatam Throfteyerde, con tinen tern l acras " was 

 bounded as one block. Farther on we learn that it paid only 

 one-fourth of the usual relief, " sicut de quarta parte unius iugi." ^ 

 At Sceldwike there is mention of a '' dimidia virgata terre " from 

 which 5f acres are granted away, and at Selling there was an 

 agreement " de tribus iugis terre et una virgata." ^ At Eltham 



* Cf. below, p. 304, n. i. 



^ Exch. Aug. Of., M. B. 56, f. 136. 



' Archaeologia Cantiana, i. 262 (Ped. Fin., 10 Rich. I), iv. 308 (8 John). 



