THE EAST ANGLIAN SYSTEM 35 I 



referred the other feature peculiar to East Anglian pasturage 

 arrangements — the privilege, namely, of independent foldage. 

 From the character of the Domesday record, therefore, it seems 

 possible to infer that the fold-courses of petty manors and the 

 particularist foldage of certain tenants may have been existent 

 prior to 1086. 



We may now return to the question of the origin and affiliation 

 of the eriung or tenementum. The foregoing digression relative 

 to the pasturage arrangements of East Anglia has served to sug- 

 gest a connection between the agrarian system there developed 

 and the small manors and numerous freemen of pre-Domesday 

 times. May there not also have been a connection between 

 these same manors and the East AngUan unit of villein tenure ? 

 The hypothesis deserves consideration, despite the difficulties 

 which it at once encounters. For two views are current regard- 

 ing the general relationship to the manor of the Anglo-Saxon 

 unit of villein tenure. In the opinion of some writers this unit 

 antedated the manor and represented the original holding of one 

 of the households of a free village community; when the manor 

 was imposed upon this community, the holdings suffered change 

 of status, not change of form.^ The contrary opinion is that the 

 persistent uniformity in the size of these holdings within a town- 

 ship points to a landlord's activity.^ Without discussing this 

 question in its wider bearings, or accepting the latter opinion 

 in the form in which it was stated by Seebohm, we may here 

 note that a fusion of the two views offers a tenable hypothesis 

 relative to the origin of the East AngHan tenementum. 



This unit, as has been explained, often in the thirteenth cen- 

 tury assumed the appearance which a Kentish holding took on 

 at some time after the disintegration of the iuga had set in. 

 Assume, now, that there were once in East Anglia units like the 

 Kentish iuga. Assume that they were divided among heirs and 

 that some of the new tenants acquired parcels in other iuga, as 

 they did in Kent. Assume, finally, that while the new holdings 

 were in this condition a manorial system was imposed upon them. 



^ Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 337-338. 

 2 Seebohm, English Village Community, pp. 176-178, 419. 



