348 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



This peculiarity of nomenclature, this avoidance of the name 

 appropriate to the midland unit, is thus at once early and per- 

 sistent. It points to some fundamental difference between 

 the East Anglian and the midland servile holding, a difference 

 that can hardly have lain in the nature of the services exacted 

 from the respective tenants; for, although East Anglian obliga- 

 tions seem in general to have been lighter than those of the mid- 

 lands, they were similar in kind. May not divergent field systems 

 have been reflected in the usage ? Just as the Kentish unit 

 avoided the midland name because the iugum was essentially 

 unlike the virgate, may not the East Anglian eriung, plena terra, 

 or tenementum have done so for the same reason ? 



Besides emphasizing the early distinction between midland 

 and East Anglian field systems, the above excursus into nomen- 

 clature has disclosed something about the earliest appearance 

 of the East Anglian unit. A villein holding, the area of which 

 was uniform in a given township, is revealed in the Ely extents 

 of the thirteenth century, where, too, it is nearly always named. 

 It is discernible, though unnamed, in the Ramsey extents of the 

 twelfth century. In the same century, however, the unit some- 

 times assumed the name by which it was later designated at 

 Martham; for in an extent of Stephen's time there is record of a 

 holding of three " ariunges," our earliest specific reference to 

 an East Anglian unit of villein tenure.^ For Domesday is non- 

 committal. Frequently as it speaks of iuga or virgates in other 

 counties, in the description of Norfolk and Suffolk (except at 

 Walsoken) it carefully avoids reference to any units except hides 

 and acres. Since the acres of the survey are never parcelled 

 out to the villeins on a manor, we cannot tell whether there 

 existed in 1086 the unnamed units which had taken form at 

 Ringstead and Brancaster some seventy-five years later. 



the name of the county is often missing from the fine, as is the case in both these 

 instances. There is another Riston in Yorkshire (a land of bovates) and there 

 are several other Uptons. The Upton in question was probably not far from 

 Luddington, with which Stephen was connected. Of the three Luddingtons in 

 England not one is in or near Norfolk. On the other hand, Luddington in Lincoln- 

 shire is only some twenty miles distant from an Upton in the same county. 

 ^ Cartulary of Ramsey Abbey, iii. 285. 



