THE EAST ANGLIAN SYSTEM 313 



of this estate, both open and enclosed, were numerous and dis- 

 parate, they did not lie scattered throughout the township, but 

 were near the farmhouse. As at Buxton, the farm was one of 

 non-contiguous parcels lying in the same section of the village 

 area. The four other hospital estates which retained most open 

 field show similar characteristics.^ 



These field arrangements can in 17 14 scarcely have been 

 recent. If they were, they would have to be explained as repre- 

 senting a transitional stage between widely-scattered strips on 

 the one hand and enclosures on the other. Apart from the cum- 

 bersomeness of a procedure that would eventually necessitate 

 another exchange, the uniformity of the evidence tells against an 

 original wide dissemination of strips. Although in some cases 

 tentative exchanges may have occurred, such a process can hardly 

 have gone on systematically and to the same degree in all the 

 properties before us. Not one of the six is an estate with parcels 

 scattered throughout the village area. If, on the other hand, it 

 be true that the arrangements of 17 14 are an inheritance from a 

 considerably earlier period, we have a contrast to the midland 

 system, the essence of which lay in a wider and more nearly 

 uniform distribution of parcels. 



For the sixteenth century, admirable data regarding field 

 arrangements are furnished by surveys and maps such as were 

 made to describe many of the earl of Leicester's estates.^ In 

 these documents there is usually no subdivision by " fields " in 

 the technical midland sense, ^ but the enumeration proceeds by 

 furlongs, frequently called stadia or quarentinae. Sometimes, 

 happily, these furlongs are so grouped that we can tell in what 

 part of the village area certain of them lay. They are referred 

 to " precincts," divisions formed usually by the highways that 

 traverse the township."* East Carleton and Hethilde were each 



1 These estates were at Snitterton, Great Melton, Trowse and Bixley, Sallows 

 and Wroxham. 



^ These are among the well-arranged records at Holkham Hall, for access to 

 which I am indebted to the Rt. Hon. the Earl of Leicester, K. G. 



^ Corbett, in his study of certain Norfolk surveys (" Elizabethan Village Sur- 

 veys," p. 70, remarks upon the unimportance of the fields. 



* Miss Davenport found mention of only precincts in the Forncett records 

 {Economic Development of a Norfolk Manor, Cambridge, 1906, p. i). 



