324 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



functioning like a midland field, the designation without doubt 

 had merely a topographical connotation. Again, we hear of 

 Kipton field, so named from its proximity to the site of the 

 manor of Kipton. Here lay 125 acres of Elmdon's land; but 

 inasmuch as these same acres are elsewhere referred to as in 

 the " newe-broken field " and were situated not far from the 

 "Shepes pasture of Kipton and Northall," the " field " in ques- 

 tion may have been a newly-improved tract of arable. 



As was just noted, parcels within the same field were at times 

 not under the same crops as neighboring parcels. Although, in 

 1583, 13 acres of Blackland field lay in wheat stubble, 45 acres 

 of the same field were at the same time in pease stubble. One 

 of the parcels in the extract quoted had been under barley for 

 one season and was to be so during the next year.^ In the fur- 

 long called Newbie there were in 1589 some parcels fallow and 

 some sown with winter corn. All this implies considerable flexi- 

 bility in the utilization of the open field. The existence of oUands, 

 or strips of grass in the midst of winter and spring corn, testifies 

 further to the same characteristic and helped make it possible. 



This flexibility appears most strikingly in the sowing of Elm- 

 don's open field in 1589. In this year, it will be remembered, 

 the acres hitherto equally divided between winter corn, spring 

 corn, and fallow were unequally apportioned. In preceding 

 years, to each crop and to the '' somerlie " had been allotted 

 about 40 acres (1583) or about 55 (1584, 1588). In 1589, the 

 total acreage accounted for was 145 acres. As usual, one-third 

 of this, 48 acres, was somerlie; of the remainder only 32 acres 

 were devoted to wheat, while upon 65 acres spring grains were 

 sown. Such expansion and contraction of the acreage assigned 

 to a particular crop would have been possible under a three-field 

 system only if all tenants had agreed to shift for the year the 

 boundaries of the three fields. In Elmdon's note-book there is 

 no hint that his dispositions rest upon communal arrangements 

 of this sort. 



As a result of the implications of Elmdon's notes, we are led 

 to conclude that a three-course rotation of crops in the open 



1 Cf. above, p. 318. 



