350 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



But to comprehend East Anglian pasturage arrangements 

 one has to consider another factor than agricultural method, 

 namely, the manor. Throughout the midlands, as Maitland 

 pointed out, manor and township tended to coincide.^ Even if 

 there chanced to be two or more manors in a township, they all 

 adapted themselves to the two- or three-field system precisely 

 as did a single comprehensive manor: demesne horses, cattle, 

 and sheep roamed over the waste and over the fallow field along 

 with the beasts of the tenants. In East Anglia, however, the 

 existence of several manors within a township was the rule rather 

 than the exception, a rule, indeed, which tended to be almost 

 universal.^ Furthermore, as we have seen, the manors of a 

 township insisted upon individuahty in pasturage arrangements. 

 Except during the autumn and winter seasons, the flock of sheep 

 which each maintained was not allowed to range over the un- 

 sown lands with the flocks belonging to the other manors of the 

 township; it was restricted to its own fold-course, where it en- 

 joyed exclusive privileges. Such particularism, antagonistic as 

 it was to action by the whole township, proved irreconcilable 

 with the practice of the two- and three-field system of tillage.^ 



It thus appears that pasturage arrangements in East Anglia, 

 so far as they had to do with fold-courses, were bound up with 

 the co-existence of two or more manors within a township. If 

 we may assume that fold-courses were as ancient as the manors 

 to which they appertained, it becomes possible to form conjec- 

 tures about the time of their origin. The petty manors of East 

 Anglia are everywhere apparent in Domesday Book.^ In that 

 record, too, Norfolk and Suffolk boast of many " commended " 

 (i. e. slightly attached) freemen, to whom may naturally be 



' Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 22, 129. 



^ Ibid., p. 23. Miss Davenport notes that in 1086 in the hundred of Depwade, 

 Norfolk, every township with possibly one exception was held of more than one 

 lord {Norfolk Manor, p. 7). 



' WTiether this particularism in pasturage had any connection with the deter- 

 mination of what constituted a manor in East Anglia cannot be here discussed, 

 but in view of the vexed state of this latter question the consideration of such a 

 possibility is not unworthy of attention. 



* Of the 659 Domesday manors of Suffolk, 294 are rated at less than one carucate 

 and only 70 at five or more carucates. Cf. Victoria History of Sufolk, i. 369. 



