THE EAST ANGLIAN SYSTEM 



337 



pro xvi d. de Redditu [obligations follow] . . . De quibus nunc 

 sunt ix tenentes," whose holdings are detailed as before. There 

 seems to have been no unit of mulelond, since the holdings of 

 the " former tenants " contained a variable number of acres. 

 Similarly, the socage land is referred to " former tenants " in 

 varying amounts, and these holdings too had been parcelled out 

 among contemporary tenants. 



In the case of the villein eriung of Thomas Knight it is easy 

 to see that the existing situation had come about through a sub- 

 division of the twelve-acre holding among heirs.^ Four tenants 

 still bore the name of Knight and had the largest shares in the 

 eriung, together retaining seven and three-fourths acres of it. 

 They may have been three or four generations removed from the 

 ancestor who gave his name to the holding. If so, Thomas 

 Knight lived in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century. 



After this introduction to a thirteenth-century Norfolk survey, 

 we may proceed in our inquiry regarding field systems. If the 

 foregoing references to the East and West fields of Martham 

 suggest that a two-field system prevailed there at the end of 

 the thirteenth century, its existence should be revealed in the 

 distribution between these fields of the acres of the old units. 

 Since at Martham the villein eriungs were the holdings most 

 invariable in size, being always in theory twelve acres, they 

 should be looked upon as the standard units and most likely to 

 be evenly divided between fields. The condition of a few typical 

 holdings, villein and other, is pictured in the following table : — 



1 That socage and villein holdings in East Anglia were ever subject to partible 

 transmission seems to have escaped the notice of legal historians. 



