334 



ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



belong to one or another " tenementum " — to Smith's tenement, 

 for example, or to Bunting's. In the fifteenth century all the 

 parcels of a holding could at times be assigned to the tenementa 

 of which they had once formed portions. A tabulation of the acres 

 of two holdings described in a survey of Bawdsey, Suflfolk, dated 

 1 6 Henry VI, will make this clear, and will show incidentally 

 the insignificant part played by field divisions at that time.' 



Surveys of East Anglian manors dating from the late fourteenth 

 or from the fifteenth century are likely to be cast in a mould 

 much like that of Bawdsey. They point, it is clear, to a still 

 earlier time in which the tenementa were the principal agrarian 

 units of the township, instead of merely serving, as they did in the 

 fifteenth century, for the apportionment of rents and services. 



In surveys and rentals of the early fourteenth or, better still, 

 of the thirteenth century, the tenementa assume their earlier 

 prominence. Surveys were not then drawn up, as at Bawdsey, 

 under the names of the contemporary tenants who had parcels 

 in different tenementa, but they were arranged according to the 

 tenementa themselves, in each of which the parcels were assigned 



1 Add. MS. 23948. 2 With toft. ' With cottage. 



